LatinoJustice PRLDEF representing expectant mother and New York Immigration Coalition
New York—Civil rights organization LatinoJustice PRLDEF filed a case today in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York calling for the Court to declare unconstitutional and contrary to US laws the Executive Order banning birthright citizenship.
The suit, New York Immigration Coalition, and J.V., v. Donald Trump et al., was filed on behalf of the immigrant-serving organization New York Immigration Coalition and a 31-year-old Venezuelan woman who currently holds Temporary Protected Status and is five months pregnant.
The complaint argues that the Executive Order violates the Constitution’s 14th Amendment granting US citizenship via jus soli to all people born in the US to people subject to US jurisdiction.
Further, removing citizenship rights from the children of undocumented parents would render these children stateless and discriminates against them because of their parents’ ancestry or national origin, which violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. The equal protection clause protects all persons including immigrants with temporary status or who are undocumented from alienage and national origin discrimination.
The complaint states that if the birthright citizenship ban goes into effect,
“Even before gaining elected office, the President has wrongly believed he has singular power to determine who gets to be a US citizen. Defining US citizenship is clearly enshrined in our Constitution and has been a matter of settled law for 127 years, and cannot be simply crossed out by one individual, even the President. This executive order targets the same people who have been deemed part of a so-called ‘invasion’ and would overnight render stateless hundreds of thousands of US-born children. This act is not only unconstitutional and cruel, but also immoral and strikes at a fundamental right of belonging for every person," said Lourdes M. Rosado, President and General Counsel, LatinoJustice PRLDEF.
J.V., the individual plaintiff in the case, entered the US in 2023 and has Temporary Protected Status (TPS) through April 2, 2025. J.V.’s partner is also of Venezuelan origin and has TPS that will expire soon. Their child, due to be born in June 2025, would be subject to the birthright citizenship ban should it go into effect.
Because there is no Venezuelan consulate in the US, J.V. would be unable to register her child as a Venezuelan citizen, rendering this US-born child stateless.
The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), the organizational plaintiff in the case, serves expectant parents whose immigration status would make them subject to the ban. Due to the potential ban, NYIC, a statewide member-led organization of over 170 immigrant and refugee-rights groups throughout New York, has had to divert resources from its legal assistance programs for immigrants, and programs connecting immigrants to social services and other programs key to its core mission to address emergency community education efforts on the ban.
“The executive order banning birthright citizenship is not only patently unconstitutional, but clearly a direct attack on people of color. By rendering the children of immigrants stateless, the majority of whom today hail from the Southern Hemisphere, this ban will create a new class of people who will remain marginalized without any protections or personhood despite being raised in the United States. This brazen attempt to enshrine a clearly discriminatory order is both hostile towards our laws and immoral, serving only to further the Trump administration’s white supremacist ambitions, bolster its political base and remake the nation to serve the billionaire class. Americans across races, places, and backgrounds know that it’s families that make vibrant communities and communities that make a prosperous nation. To ensure the health and well-being of our nation, we must keep all families whole, make our communities thrive and transform our nation into a place of liberty, opportunity and justice for all," said Murad Awawdeh, President and CEO, New York Immigration Coalition.
Each year, an estimated 250,000 children are born to undocumented parents. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants in the US are Latino – 72 percent – so this group would be disproportionately affected by the ban. According to federal tax figures, undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $59.4 billion in federal taxes, $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes and $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and are not eligible to receive federal benefits.
This case follows several other suits that have been filed to block the January 20 executive order.
A federal court in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction on February 10 blocking the executive order. A second federal court in Seattle had placed a hold on the executive order on February 6 in response to a lawsuit brought by four states, and a federal judge in Maryland ruled similarly on a case brought on behalf of immigrant rights’ groups and pregnant women whose children would be affected.
A prior case was filed January 31 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
This case is different from those filed by other civil rights organizations because it lifts up the harsh and disproportionate impacts on Latinos and highlights the President’s venomous statements, which clearly show his intention to target these immigrants because of their ancestry and deny them equal protection under the law.
The full text of the complaint is available here.