Mothers’ Lawsuit Over Birthright Citizenship Gains Class Action Status

An immigrant rights group and several mothers are getting another opportunity to challenge the Trump administration’s effort to revise birthright citizenship policies.

On January 20, the 45th and 47th president issued Executive Order 14160. This order seeks to introduce a significant change in constitutional interpretation, proposing that automatic citizenship is not granted to a child born in the United States to an undocumented mother, unless the father has some form of legal status.

Some of the plaintiffs in the case originally sued on Feb. 13.

Their 24-page initial petition alleging constitutional and statutory violations was put on hold by U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett, appointed by Joe Biden, after other courts issued injunctions against the policy – and due to the government’s request to pause the case while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the permissibility of district court-issued nationwide injunctions.

On June 27, the nation”s high court disallowed such expansive injunctions but left open the possibility of similar results using an entirely different rule of civil procedure. A lower court can now issue broad injunctive relief if plaintiffs constitute themselves sufficiently as a class of similarly-situated individuals in a class action lawsuit – and if a court decides the class is broad enough to warrant nationwide relief.

Now, in a 37-page amended complaint, the immigrants’ rights plaintiffs – who have added members in the form of two additional mothers – argue they represent a class “so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable” and that they therefore should be allowed to move forward as representatives of this would-be class. The putative class itself is defined in the lawsuit as: “All persons born in the United States on or after February 19, 2025, who have been or will be denied birthright citizenship because their parents’ immigration statuses are the subject of Executive Order 14160.”

“There are questions of law and fact common to the class, which predominate over any questions affecting only individuals, and which stem from a common policy and practice — the categorical denial of United States citizenship to all children born on or after February 19, 2025, to parents whose immigration status are targeted by the birthright citizenship Executive Order,” the filing argues, alleging facts in line with the rules required for class action certification.

To hear the plaintiffs tell it, a class action is necessary in the case because the proposed members “are geographically dispersed throughout the country, are likely of low-income status, and do not possess the resources necessary to litigate individual cases” and because “the proposed class will fluctuate each month as new children are born in the United States to parents with immigration status targeted by the birthright citizenship ban.”

The merits of the lawsuit necessarily turn on the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment – which the motion makes clear.

“Ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment — the Citizenship Clause — declares ‘[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,'” the filing reads. “Thirty years after ratification, construing the plain text of the Citizenship Clause and affirming the ancient and fundamental rule of jus soli — citizenship by virtue of place of birth — the Supreme Court ruled that the Citizenship Clause guarantees citizenship to U.S.-born children irrespective of parental alienage, race, or immigration status.”

The lawsuit goes on to accuse the Trump administration of “defying” nearly 127 years of law with the effort to overturn the long-standing interpretation of that key clause.

The lawsuit goes on to allege that President Donald Trump’s executive order violates the equal protection clause because it “invidiously discriminates against future U.S.-born children because of their parental alienage — a burden that falls harshly and disproportionately on Latinos.”

The plaintiffs essay a parade of horribles argument, warning about the vast social destruction likely to occur should the government get its way – again with a focus on the disproportionate impact the change would have on Latinos.

From the complaint, at length:

Stripping birthright citizenship will have deleterious consequences. It will render stateless thousands of children born to immigrants residing in the United States who have temporary immigration status or are undocumented. It will force U.S.-born children into the shadows of society without the benefits and opportunities of citizenship. It will put them at risk of deportation because they are stateless. It will deprive U.S.-born children of their identity as Americans; deny them access to critical legal documents like U.S. passports and social security cards; and may deprive them of essential health care, nutrition, and early childhood education—benefits they need to nurture their health and development.

Stripping birthright citizenship will adversely impact about 53 percent of undocumented Latinos, between the ages of 25 and 44, who are in their prime childbearing years and whose U.S.-born children will be stripped of the privileges and immunities of citizenship.

The lawsuit itself opens with a perhaps controversially-chosen quote from former Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren – a quote from a dissent in a case where a man lost his U.S. citizenship after dodging the draft by moving to Mexico and then voting in Mexican elections.

“Citizenship is man’s basic right for it is nothing less than the right to have rights,” the vanguard member of the high court’s liberal turn wrote in 1957. “Remove this priceless possession and there remains a stateless person.”