The Maine ACLU is suing President Donald Trump over his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.
It is among several organizations that filed the lawsuit Monday night in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire. The Maine ACLU joins the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Massachusetts, the ACLU, the Asian Law Caucus, State Democracy Defenders Fund and the Legal Defense fund in filing the lawsuit on behalf of organizations with members whose babies born on U.S. soil would be denied citizenship, according to a press release.
Under the order, anyone born to a mother not lawfully present in the United States would be denied citizenship.
The lawsuit was filed within two hours of Trump signing the order. It is the first among a slew of legal challenges expected from California to Illinois, according to Politico.
In the lawsuit, the organizations said Trump’s order violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law, exceeding the power of his office.
Citizenship was extended to everyone born in the U.S. under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that interpretation in a 6-2 ruling that decided that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese noncitizens living in the country was, in fact, a citizen and that the Chinese Exclusion Act did not apply to him.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs call birthright citizenship one of the “fundamental American constitutional values.
“Denying citizenship to U.S. born children is not only unconstitutional — it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values. Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is. This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans. We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged. The Trump administration’s overreach is so egregious that we are confident we will ultimately prevail,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
