A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from implementing an executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it "blatantly unconstitutional."
US District Judge John Coughenour, at the urging of four Democratic-led states, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day in office.
"This is a blatantly unconstitutional order," the judge told a lawyer with the US Justice Department defending Trump's order.
The order has already become the subject of five lawsuits by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, who call it a flagrant violation of the US Constitution.
"Under this order, babies being born today don't count as US citizens," Washington Assistant Attorney General Lane Polozola told Senior US District Judge John Coughenour at the start of a hearing in Seattle.