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State of Mass., civil rights groups already suing over Trump’s birthright citizenship order
Trump's executive order seeks to end birthright citizenship for some children born to immigrants.
Massachusetts has followed Boston-based civil rights groups in waging a legal battle against President Donald Trump, taking aim at his “egregious” and “flagrantly illegal” effort to halt birthright citizenship for some children born to immigrants.
In her first lawsuit against Trump’s new administration, Attorney General Andrea Campbell teamed up with officials from 17 other states, the District of Columbia, and San Francisco to push back against Trump’s executive order seeking to end near-universal birthright citizenship. Four more states filed a second lawsuit in the Western District of Washington, The New York Times reported.
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“President Trump does not have the authority to take away constitutional rights, and we will fight against his effort to overturn our Constitution and punish innocent babies born in Massachusetts,” Campbell said in a statement.
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The lawsuit follows a similar complaint from Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights and immigrant advocacy organizations La Colaborativa and the Brazilian Worker Center, which sued Trump in Boston’s U.S. District Court just hours after he signed the order. As in the multi-state suit, the groups are asking a judge to declare the order unconstitutional and block its implementation.
“This unprecedented attempt to strip citizenship from millions of Americans with the stroke of a pen is flagrantly illegal,” the lawsuit states. “The President does not have the power to decide who becomes a citizen at birth.”
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The three groups filed their complaint on behalf of expectant mothers impacted by the executive order, including “O. Doe,” a Massachusetts resident in the country through temporary protected status and due to give birth in March. Trump’s new policy would “de-Americanize children” and deny them rights, legal protections, and access to key documents like passports and Social Security cards, the organizations argue.
“This Executive Order is a brutal and unconstitutional attempt to redefine what it means to be an American,” Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director for Lawyers for Civil Rights, said in a statement. “The Constitution is clear: birthplace, not parentage, determines citizenship in this country. This lawsuit is about ensuring that the fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution are upheld.”
Trump’s order seeks to end automatic citizenship in cases where a child’s mother is “unlawfully present” in the U.S. or here on a temporary visa and their father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. Birthright citizenship is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and an 1898 Supreme Court case affirmed the principle extends to the children of immigrants.
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In Massachusetts, 30,100 children with U.S. citizenship were living with at least one undocumented parent as of 2022, according to the nonprofit American Immigration Council. Gladys Vega, executive director of La Colaborativa, called Trump’s order a “blatant attack” on immigrant families.
“Our members are mothers, fathers, workers, and neighbors who came to this country searching for a safer and better life,” Vega said. “Denying citizenship to their U.S.-born children undermines the ideals of fairness and opportunity that define America. We will not stand idly by while our children are targeted and their rights and dignity are erased.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and its New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts chapters have filed a separate lawsuit challenging the order in New Hampshire federal court. Together with the Asian Law Caucus, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and Legal Defense Fund, they’re suing Trump’s administration on behalf of several groups with members whose children would be denied citizenship under the order.
“Denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional — it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement.
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Even before a Supreme Court packed with conservative justices, Trump’s executive order has only a slim chance of surviving the impending legal battles, argued Thomas Wolf, director of democracy initiatives for the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning nonprofit law and public policy institute.
In an analysis published Monday, Wolf pointed to the Fuller Court, which affirmed birthright citizenship in 1898 after upholding racial segregation laws in Plessy v. Ferguson two years prior.
“Even those justices — who embraced the two-tiered ‘separate but equal’ regime of race relations that ruled the United States for generations — couldn’t find an honest way around the 14th Amendment’s plain language,” Wolf noted.
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