The DOJ filed a motion of appeal shortly after U.S. District Judge John Coughenour indefinitely blocked Trump’s executive action from moving forward.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is appealing an order issued by a Seattle federal judge this week indefinitely blocking President Donald Trump’s attempt to end automatic birthright citizenship for children born to parents who are in the United States illegally.
The department filed a notice Thursday evening stating that it would appeal the ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
It came just hours after U.S. District Judge John Coughenour handed down his decision and marked the first efforts by the Trump administration to take the issue to a higher court amid multiple legal challenges.
Trump’s order on birthright citizenship, issued shortly after he assumed office, claims that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause does not extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.
According to the order, the citizenship clause has “always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ’subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the clause excludes an individual if that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the country and the individual’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of his or her birth, Trump’s order states.
The order further states that U.S. citizenship does not apply to an individual whose mother’s presence in the country was lawful but temporary at the time of their birth—such as those in the country on a Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student or tourist visa—and whose father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of that individual’s birth.
Trump’s policy was set to take effect later this month but has been put on hold amid multiple legal challenges, including a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington state and an immigrant rights group.
They had argued that Trump went beyond his powers with the executive action and that the move would leave more than 150,000 babies born this year without citizenship because their parents are illegally in the country.
In issuing his ruling granting a nationwide preliminary injunction, Coughenour accused Trump of attempting to disguise what was effectively a constitutional amendment in an executive order.
