North Carolina joins lawsuit to stop Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship
North Carolina joined 17 other states Tuesday in suing the Trump administration over an executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, contends the executive order President Donald Trump signed Monday violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and is a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
Birthright citizenship has been recognized in the United States since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Under current law, anyone born in the country is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of the legal status of their parents, according to the Associated Press. An exception exists for the children of foreign diplomatic officers.
In a statement, N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, said Trump’s executive order is a “straightforward violation” of the Fourteenth Amendment and its guarantee of birthright citizenship, which he said had been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court for more than a century, and “remains a bedrock of our constitutional framework.”
“The Constitution leaves no room for executive reinterpretation on this matter — it is clear, settled, and binding,” Jackson said. “This order seeks to undermine that clarity, creating legal uncertainty and denying fundamental rights to children born in this country.”
“As Attorney General, my role is straightforward as well: to defend the Constitution,” Jackson said. “That’s why I’ve joined this lawsuit, to uphold the rule of law and preserve the rights that have defined our nation for generations.”
The executive order Trump signed Monday directs the federal government to stop issuing passports or other documents recognizing citizenship to children born in the United States without a parent who is a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Trump made ending birthright citizenship a key campaign promise while running for reelection, and said he would sign an executive order to that effect on the first day of his administration.
He previously said the order was necessary to “choke off a major incentive for continued illegal immigration, deter more migrants from coming, and encourage many of the aliens Joe Biden has unlawfully let into our country to go back to their home countries.”
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states that “All 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.”
Trump’s executive order states that children of noncitizens who are born in the United States are “not subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and don’t automatically qualify for citizenship.
In their lawsuit against the order, attorneys general for the 18 states, as well as the District of Columbia and the city and county of San Francisco, said that birthright citizenship “has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years” and was upheld by the Supreme Court more than 125 years ago in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction to stop the executive order from taking effect while the legal challenge proceeds in court.
If the order takes place, the attorneys general said, it will affect thousands of children who are born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents.
“They will all be deportable, and many will be stateless,” the lawsuit states. “They will lose the ability to access myriad federal services that are available to their fellow Americans. And despite the Constitution’s guarantee of their citizenship, they will lose their rights to participate in the economic and civic life of their own country — to work, vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices.”
Jackson’s office said in a news release that it is “also unclear how North Carolina parents would be able to document and prove that their newborns are American citizens, since North Carolina birth certificates may not contain the necessary information to satisfy the requirements of the executive order.”
The other states joining the lawsuit are New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
Another lawsuit challenging the birthright citizenship executive order was filed Monday by the ACLU in New Hampshire.
This story was originally published January 21, 2025 at 4:02 PM with the headline "North Carolina joins lawsuit to stop Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship."
