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Appeals Court Rules Trump Attempt to End Birthright Citizenship Unconstitutional

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A three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed with a lower court’s ruling that President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to redefine birthright citizenship is unconstitutional.

The executive order, signed by Trump in his first week in office, is “invalid,” the majority opinion of the court explained in its ruling, “because it contradicts the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment’s grant of citizenship to ‘all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.'”

The lawsuit was originally brought before a district court in Washington State by the attorneys general of Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Illinois. The class-action lawsuit may fit into the parameters established by the Supreme Court last month for how a district court can issue injunctions across the entirety of the country.

The 2-1 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court panel affirms what that lower court concluded — that the president cannot unilaterally change the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause.

That portion of the amendment reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction........

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