U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to sign an executive order in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents without legal immigration status, the second such ruling in as many days.
U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour’s nationwide preliminary injunction comes two weeks after he issued a temporary restraining order putting a 14-day stop to the Trump administration acting on its plans to ban birthright citizenship.
“It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Coughenour said Thursday. “In this courtroom, and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.”
The earlier order was the first in the nation blocking the executive order signed on Trump’s first day in office. Thursday marked 14 days since Coughenour’s initial ruling.
Coughenour’s rulings stem from a lawsuit filed by Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and his counterparts in Oregon, Arizona and Illinois.
On Wednesday, in a case brought by two immigration nonprofits and five pregnant women, a federal judge in Maryland also blocked Trump’s attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship.
Lane Polozola, of the Washington attorney general’s office, said this case warranted another injunction because the states face different impacts and because Washington and the others involved in its case can’t affect how the Maryland litigation unfolds.
A hearing on a preliminary injunction is set for Friday in a third case filed by 18 states.
The injunctions will likely remain in effect until the case is resolved, unless a higher court overturns them. Attorneys assume the issue will eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, where three Trump appointees sit.
Before the Supreme Court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would have jurisdiction over the case. Democratic presidents appointed a majority of the circuit court’s judges.
Speaking to reporters after the ruling, Brown thanked the lawyers “for helping remind this country we do not have a king.”
“We have a president who must abide by the laws, and if they want to amend the Constitution, there is a process to which to do that,” Brown said.
At a court hearing last month, Coughenour chastised the Trump administration’s attorney from the Department of Justice, calling the president’s order “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Since then, Coughenour has merged the states’ case with one that three pregnant women in Washington without legal immigration status filed. One of those women has since dropped out of the case out of fear of repercussions, said Matt Adams, the legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
Meanwhile, 18 Republican-led states, with the help of Pete Serrano, who ran unsuccessfully for Washington state attorney general last year, pushed the judge to let the president’s order stand.
On Thursday, Coughenour, who Republican President Ronald Reagan nominated to the federal bench in 1981, noted “how impressive” the court filings from Washington and the other states on its side have been, and commended Brown for his work.
Trump’s executive action aims to end birthright citizenship for babies born to a mother and father who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. The order was set to take effect Feb. 19.
In 2022, about 153,000 babies were born to two parents without legal immigration status across the country, including 4,000 in Washington, according to the state’s lawsuit.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution codified birthright citizenship in 1868, and legal precedent has upheld it since.
The amendment begins: “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 order focused on the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” phrase.
“The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” Trump’s executive order reads. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
However, these children are still subject to U.S. law and states need to provide them services, attorneys for Washington have argued. If they are no longer U.S. citizens, states will lose federal dollars for those services.
Coughenour said the Constitution “is not something with which the government may play policy games.”
“If the government wants to change the exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution itself. That’s how our Constitution works, and that’s how the rule of law works,” the judge continued. “Because the president’s order attempts to circumscribe this process, it is clearly unconstitutional.”
Much of the arguments Thursday centered on an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court case. In that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the concept of birthright citizenship by ruling Wong Kim Ark, a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, was a U.S. citizen.
But attorneys for the Trump administration argued the justices in that case were careful to note citizenship only carries to those with a “permanent domicile and residence in the United States.” People here unlawfully or temporarily don’t have a permanent domicile here, they said.
The states’ attorneys cite a different passage from the Wong Kim Ark case, which reads: “Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States.”
gov.uscourts.wawd_.343943.114.0_1
A copy of the preliminary injunction granted on Feb. 6, 2025 by U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour.
Washington State Standard originally published this article. Like the Alaska Beacon, the Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com.
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