Harvard Law Professor Criticizes Trump’s Attempt to End Birthright Citizenship

Harvard Law School Professor Gerald L. Neuman ’73 denounced President Donald Trump’s stalled attempt to end birthright citizenship — seven years after he first criticized the president over the same issue.

After Trump first reportedly considered the measure in 2018, Neuman joined 14 constitutional law scholars in a statement denouncing the action. Now, after Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the first few hours of his second term, Neuman is reiterating his concerns.

“The theory on which the executive order is based is junk science, but one can’t predict what an individual judge will do when presented with a highly political case, and one might not even be able to predict what the United States Supreme Court will do,” Neuman said.

After Trump signed the executive order, 22 states — including Massachusetts — multiple cities, and activist groups filed six lawsuits against the action. These 22 states are seeking to preliminarily halt the enforcement of the executive order, and invalidate it altogether before its impact worsens.

“Birthright citizenship in our country is a guarantee of equality, born out of a collective fight against oppression, slavery and its devastating harms,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a press release. “It is a settled right in our Constitution and recognized by the Supreme Court for more than a century.”

These lawsuits have temporarily delayed Trump’s attempt to overturn birthright citizenship — a century-old right enshrined in the 14th Amendment to grant citizenship to anyone born in the US, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. On Jan. 23, the order was temporarily blocked by Federal District Court judge John C. Coughenour.

Neuman, who teaches human rights, constitutional law, and immigration and nationality law at HLS, said Trump’s executive order directly contradicts the “purpose that the 14th Amendment was adopted for.”

“In particular for the undocumented, it would appear that results would be that children would be born as undocumented themselves, and the consequence of a system like that would be a hereditary caste of non-citizens, vulnerable to exploitation and abuse,” Neuman said.

Neuman also said that the ramifications of the executive order could reach far beyond children born to non-citizens, “who could now be told that they are not citizens.”

The executive order threatens the citizenship status of individuals who rely on federal programs — which Campell’s office warned could jeopardize portions of the state’s federal funding.

“Among other things, this Order will cause the coalition of states to lose federal funding for programs that they administer, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and foster care and adoption assistance programs, which all turn at least in part on the immigration status of the resident being served,” Campbell’s office wrote in a press release last week.

As the lawsuits make their way through the courts, Neuman said that there are no historical examples from the Executive Branch to support Trump’s actions.

“There’s no precedent for this being done — there’s no precedent for this being done by an executive,” Neuman said.

“This is an extreme, extreme overreach of constitutional authority,” he added.

—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Frances Y. Yong can be reached at frances.yong@thecrimson.com.