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A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order that denies US citizenship to children born in the country to unauthorised immigrants.
John Coughenour, a US district judge presiding over the case in the state of Washington, on Thursday called the policy “blatantly unconstitutional”, as he handed down a temporary restraining order halting the president’s measure, according to media reports.
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by four Democratic state attorneys-general led by the state of Washington — one of several legal challenges that were swiftly mounted against the order that Trump signed on Monday, just hours after being sworn in as US president.
Other Democratic state attorneys-general as well as civil rights groups this week filed separate lawsuits to invalidate the birthright ban, all alleging similar violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that all “persons born or naturalised in the US . . . are citizens of the United States”.
“If allowed to stand, the unconstitutional and un-American order would cause thousands of newborns and children in Washington to lose their ability to fully and fairly participate in American society as citizens, despite the Constitution’s guarantee of their citizenship,” said the office of Washington’s attorney-general on Tuesday, which was joined by Oregon, Arizona and Illinois in the lawsuit.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story
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