The decision of a federal judge to prevent the Trump administration from stripping the citizenship of birth law for some babies born in the US.
On Thursday morning, in New Hampshire, the American district judge Joseph Laplante granted class action status to a lawsuit that seeks to protect babies who would be denied by the citizenship of birth rights, and granted a temporary block of the order of President Donald Trump to enter into force throughout the country.
The decision brought hope to pregnant women and groups who received a blow two weeks ago when the Supreme Court greatly restricted the ability of federal judges to use one of the strongest tools at their disposal: the use of cautious at the national level to prevent federal policies from entering into force.
The decision of the Supreme Court would have allowed Trump’s executive order to enter into force on July 27 in parts of the United States.
Then, immigrants and their lawyers turned to seek class action status for immigrant babies and parents in the hope of finding another way of detaining the president.
“It was clear that the Decision of the Supreme Court had closed a very important door for challenging policies, but also in the process opened other doors,” News Muzaffar Chishti, a principal member of the Institute of Migration Policy, told NBC.
The Supreme Court has not yet declared if Trump’s executive order is unconstitutional and multiple demands that challenge him are still ongoing.
But his decision on June 27 left an important route for the plaintiffs to try to stop federal government policies throughout the country through the use of class action demands.
“This case is an early evidence of how the litigants will adapt to the legal landscape after the death coup of the Supreme Court to the national mandates,” said Chookti. “Normally it has been, if not years, to observe an altered landscape. But since this is such an important constitutional problem, we have the opportunity to visit the landscape again in two weeks.”
According to Trump’s plan, birth citizenship would be limited to those who have at least one father who is an American or permanent resident. The order also denies citizens to children whose mothers are temporarily in the United States, including those who visit under the visa exemption program or as tourists, or who are students and whose parents are not citizens or permanent legal residents.
In the written order issued on Thursday, Laplante wrote that the Certified Class Action of the Court to the following group when issuing the National Block of the Trump order: “All current and future people born on February 20, 2025, in February 2025, where (1) the mother of that person was illegally present in the presence of the mother of the person and mother of the United person at the time The United States at the time of the united person at the time of the person of the person, or (2 of the person, the mother of the person, at the time of the United person, at the time of the person of the United States, at the time of the person of the United States. He was legal but temporary, and the father of the person was not a citizen of the United States or permanent legal resident at the time of the birth of said person. “
Laplante, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, had previously denied issuing a national mandate in a similar case earlier this year. Instead, he had issued a narrower order in which he only blocked the policy of being applied to members of groups that would be affected by the Trump order.
A omable legal challenge
But his order on Thursday effectively blocked Trump’s executive order to be enforced throughout the country, at least temporarily.
“This was a decision that certified a preliminary class of people throughout the country of a judge who was skeptical of national mandates, so I think it shows that the mechanism of class action is viable, that the courts are willing to entertain,” said Haiyun Damon-FENG, a professor of constitutional and constitutional law at the Cardozo Law School.
Cody Wofsy, the main lawyer of the American Union of Civil Liberties in the case, said after the Court Court on Thursday that the Laplante Order was going to “protect each child throughout the country from this executive order without law, unconstitutional and cruel.”
White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement to NBC News that the decision was “an obvious and illegal attempt to avoid the clear order of the Supreme Court against Universal Relief.”
“The decision of this judge ignores the rule of law to abuse the procedures for the certification of class action. The Trump administration will strongly fight against the attempts of these judges of the District Courts dishonest of preventing the policies that President Trump was chosen to implement,” Fields said in the statement.
The Trump administration has seven days to appeal the temporary block of Laplante to a superior court, and the problem could return to the Supreme Court to determine if the judge’s order meets the ruling last month.
“It is not the end of the right to the question of birth right. We are probably going to see more fights about the procedure, about the issue of class certification, as well as the question of birth law citizenship about merits,” said Damon-FENG.
