Arizona AG Kris Mayes expects birthright citizenship lawsuit to reach Supreme Court

PHOENIX – Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Wednesday her lawsuit to block President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship will “almost certainly” reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

And if it gets there, Arizona’s top law enforcement officer thinks it will be an easy decision for the nation’s high court.

“I don’t think it’s a close call at all,” Mayes told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show.

Mayes and three other Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit in a Seattle U.S. District Court on Tuesday that argues Trump’s order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” is unconstitutional.

Eighteen other states, along with two cities, filed a similar suit in a different jurisdiction the same day.

Mayes says birthright citizenship order is unconstitutional

“Fundamentally, our lawsuit is about the fact that the 14th Amendment and the Constitution says what it says, which is that if you are born in the United States of America, you are a citizen of the United States of America,” Mayes said.

Ratified in 1868 in in the aftermath of the Civil War to ensure citizenship for former slaves and their children, the 14th Amendment says: “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 Trump administration’s position is that the children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and therefore aren’t subject to the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision.

Mayes wondered what that would mean about how other laws could be applied to noncitizens.

“Does that mean I can’t go out and prosecute the Mexican drug cartels because these people are not subject to our jurisdiction?” she asked. “This has huge and terrible ramifications for law enforcement, as well.”

Additionally, Mayes said the right to birthright citizenship has 150 years of case law on its side.

“No president, regardless of political party, has the ability with the stroke of a pen to rewrite the United States Constitution,” she said.

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