On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,”
aiming to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to non-citizen parents.
The order reinterprets the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, stipulating that U.S. citizenship at birth would no longer be granted in two specific situations:
1. When the mother was unlawfully present in the U.S., and the father was neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of birth.
2. When the mother was in the U.S. on a temporary status, such as a student, work, or tourist visa, and the father was neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of birth.
These provisions were set to take effect for children born on or after February 19, 2025.
The executive order faced immediate legal challenges.
On January 21, eighteen state attorneys general filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts,
asserting that the order violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Additionally, immigrant and asylum-seeker rights groups filed a lawsuit in a Maryland federal court on behalf of five pregnant women.
On January 23, 2025, Senior Judge John C. Coughenour of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington
issued a temporary restraining order, halting the implementation of the executive order.
Judge Coughenour described the order as “blatantly unconstitutional.”
The restraining order is effective for 14 days, with a hearing for a preliminary injunction scheduled for February 6, 2025.
The legal challenges argue that the executive order contradicts the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,
which has been interpreted to grant citizenship to nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status.
The outcome of these legal proceedings will have significant implications for U.S. immigration policy and the interpretation of constitutional citizenship rights.
