Two state attorneys general who are part of the lawsuit to prevent President Donald Trump from ending birthright citizenship expressed their concerns to YSL News that this action could negatively affect funding for programs related to children’s healthcare and education.

On Tuesday, a coalition of eighteen Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit together in a federal court in Massachusetts, spearheaded by the attorneys general from New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California.

While many legal experts have spotlighted the order’s unconstitutionality, arguing that it breaches the 14th Amendment, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin are also anxious about a potential loss of federal funding for programs like Medicaid that support U.S.-born children.

“This could have a significant impact on children in the future,” Bonta stated.

“For states, this would mean we have to take on the costs of healthcare and educational services that the federal government currently partly covers,” Platkin added.

Additionally, four other states led by Democrats—Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon—have initiated a separate lawsuit in a federal court in Washington state. The judge in that case quickly issued a temporary restraining order halting the Trump administration from enforcing the order, labeling it as “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“We will obviously appeal it,” Trump remarked Thursday.

“The Department of Justice will strongly defend President Trump’s executive order, which accurately interprets the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We are eager to present a comprehensive argument to both the Court and the American people, who want to see our nation’s laws enforced,” a spokesperson from the Justice Department stated.

The order released on Monday outlines that U.S. citizenship would no longer be automatic for individuals born in the U.S. if their parents are either unauthorized immigrants or only temporarily authorized. Starting in around a month, infants born under these circumstances will not receive federal documents that affirm U.S. citizenship, such as passports or Social Security cards.

According to the lawsuit, this new definition is “outrageously unlawful.”

The 18 states reference the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which asserts that all individuals “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This means that any child born in the country is a U.S. citizen, irrespective of their parents’ immigration status.

“What the president has enacted is one of the most remarkable and unprecedented actions by a president aimed at essentially rewriting the Constitution,” Platkin told YSL News.

Harrison Fields, the White House principal deputy press secretary, commented in a statement to YSL News, “Radical Leftists face a choice: they can either resist the strong will of the people or collaborate with President Trump to promote his widely supported initiatives.”

“These lawsuits are merely a continuation of the Left’s opposition, and the Trump Administration is prepared to confront them in court,” Fields added.

A poll conducted from January 9 to 13 by the AP and the University of Chicago’s NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that about 51% of Americans opposed amending the Constitution to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents lack authorization to reside in the U.S., while only 28% supported such a change.

Effects on Child Services

The federal government assists states in providing a variety of health and education services to children via programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). According to the lawsuit, it reimburses states for about 50 to 75 percent of expenses related to Medicaid and CHIP for eligible children.

“Not only will these children be ineligible for numerous public services available to U.S. citizens and ‘qualified aliens’, but they may also hesitate to access services for which they qualify because of fears concerning deportation and harassment from authorities,” the states indicated in a memorandum.

Shelley Lapkoff, a senior demographer at the National Demographics Corporation, which specializes in demographic research, provided an estimate regarding the scale of Trump’s order in a declaration accompanying the lawsuit. She projected that 153,000 births in the U.S. in 2022—accounting for 4% of all births to U.S. residents—occurred when neither parent was authorized to be in the country.

Bonta predicts that in California alone, over 20,000 children annually might be affected, jeopardizing their access to essential government services and programs as well as their future opportunities to work, vote, serve on juries, and potentially hold public office.

“This executive order has already caused immediate harm,” he said.

‘Violated the U.S. Constitution’

One key reason for the states’ rapid filing of their lawsuit against Trump’s order on birthright citizenship is their belief that their legal argument is robust, as noted by Bonta and Platkin.

The attorneys general refer to a Supreme Court decision from 1898, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, where the court affirmed that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents acquired U.S. citizenship at birth. The ruling highlighted the 14th Amendment, which was enacted post-Civil War to address the legal rights of formerly enslaved individuals.

The Trump administration seems prepared to argue that a specific section of the 14th Amendment excludes children of parents who are not authorized permanent residents from citizenship. This section asserts that birthright citizenship applies to individuals born in the U.S. “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, has much elaborated on this argument, claiming that children of parents lacking permanent legal residency in the U.S. are “subject to the political jurisdiction (and loyalty) of their parents’ country.”

“The fact that a tourist or undocumented individual is subject to our laws and courts if they violate our laws does not place them within the political ‘jurisdiction’ of the United States as defined by the framers of the 14th Amendment,” von Spakovsky argued.

However, the attorneys general assert that this viewpoint diverges significantly from how courts and presidential administrations have interpreted the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment for over a century. In their lawsuit, they contend that the jurisdictional language in the amendment was designed to exclude individuals with immunity from local laws, including tribal members and the offspring of foreign diplomats.

“No president has attempted anything like this since the Civil War, and I’m confident that the courts will recognize this as a blatant breach of the Constitution and the laws of our nation,” Platkin remarked to YSL News.

Trump “is attempting to overturn over 125 years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent,” Bonta stated. “He has undeniably broken the law. He’s attacked U.S. citizens, targeted children, and infringed on the U.S. Constitution.”