President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 and immediately signed a series of executive orders on immigration, regulation, and other issues.
In response, multiple organizations have brought lawsuits alleging that he’s violating the Constitution.
Birthright Citizenship
One of Trump’s executive orders prohibits agencies from granting citizenship to children born from mothers who are either illegal immigrants or have temporary status within the United States.The restriction applies to children when their fathers are either not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents at the time of the child’s birth.
In doing so, he pushed back against longstanding executive branch practice and commonly held but disputed views about the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause.
That clause states in part: “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.”
The lawsuits ask federal courts in Washington state, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts to block Trump’s order and declare it contrary to the Constitution.
They also allege that Trump violated federal immigration law and the Administrative Procedures Act.
“These many thousands of children may never be able to naturalize, nor to obtain citizenship from any other nation,” the lawsuit from 18 states, the District of Columbia, and San Francisco read.
“They will be ineligible for most federal public benefits, including federal financial student aid, and will live under a constant threat of deportation.”
The issue could prompt a Supreme Court ruling and lead the justices to revisit a precedent from the late 19th century known as Wong Kim Ark.
In 1898, a majority of the court held that the 14th Amendment granted birthright citizenship to a Chinese man whose parents were legally present in the United States.
Some have questioned whether the reasoning in that decision applies to children of the illegal immigrants who have crossed the southern border.
Further complicating matters, Trump has declared the southern border crisis a national emergency and invasion.
Department of Government Efficiency
Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency was established on Jan. 20 for the purposes of “modernizing federal technology and software and maximiz[ing] governmental efficiency and productivity.”At least four lawsuits have been filed against DOGE by interest groups.
“The experiences of Big Tech and pharmaceutical industry billionaires are not wholly representative of the experiences or interests of the American people,” a lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and other groups reads.
It alleged that “DOGE’s membership does not include anyone who brings the perspective of the people and communities that will be most directly affected by the drastic cuts to the federal programs and services that DOGE will recommend.”
The lawsuit also takes issue with DOGE members using the messaging app Signal, which contains an auto-delete function. The groups allege that it threatens to deprive “the American public of records to which they are entitled under FACA.”
The group had sought various records, including transition materials sent to or received by OMB and referencing DOGE, Musk, or Ramaswamy.
Federal Workers
One of the first orders Trump signed was one aimed at making it easier to fire federal workers. It reinstated an order he had implemented during his first administration but with some modifications.“In recent years, however, there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership,” he said.
“Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service, beginning with positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”
On Inauguration Day, a federal employee union representing employees across 37 agencies and departments sued Trump in federal court.
The National Treasury Employees Union alleges that Trump exceeded his statutory authority and violated the Administrative Procedures Act.
More specifically, it said that Trump was attempting to violate due process rights for workers.
“When establishing hiring principles, Congress determined that most federal government jobs be in the merit-based, competitive service,” it said.
“And it established that most federal employees have due process rights if their agency employer wants to remove them from employment.”
