More than a dozen states have joined together to sue the Trump administration over the President’s executive order that ends birthright citizenship.
The case was filed in Massachusetts as a joint effort between the Attorneys General in Massachusetts and New York and it was joined by the following other states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon are also challenging this in a separate joint case.
They argue that “the principle of birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years [and that] the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unambiguously and expressly confers citizenship on ‘all persons born’ in and ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States.”
The “subject to the jurisdiction” part is where the argument lies and it could get extremely technical. The Trump administration expected this fight and they expect to take it all the way to the Supreme Court where we may yet get a SCOTUS interpretation.
