Asian American lawyers continue constitutional fight despite SCOTUS setback

Asian American legal organizations are pressing forward with their constitutional challenge against President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, undeterred by Friday’s Supreme Court ruling that limited nationwide injunctions blocking the policy.

In a statement responding to the ruling, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), which leads a coalition with nearly 50 affiliates nationwide in defending birthright citizenship, reaffirmed its position that Executive Order 14160 is “patently unconstitutional.” The ruling addressed only procedural injunction issues, the group said, but not the constitutionality of the executive order.

NAPABA, which represents more than 80,000 Asian Pacific American legal professionals, had been preparing for this complex legal terrain. In an interview with The Rebel Yellow, Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel Rahat N. Babar said they have filed amicus briefs in the Courts of Appeals for the First, Fourth and Ninth Circuits and anticipated that litigation will likely continue.

The coalition’s legal strategy centers on defending the 1898 landmark case United States v. Wong Kim Ark. “Since 1868, the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,’” Babar emphasized, adding that Congress has also “enshrined this protection into statute.”

Babar argued that the Trump administration fundamentally misinterprets Wong Kim Ark by “mistakenly analogizing Wong Kim Ark’s parents to modern day green card holders.” Chinese migrants like Wong and his parents, he said, “faced widespread exclusion, mass violence, expulsions and draconian immigration restrictions” — a context crucial to understanding why the precedent should protect all U.S.-born children today.

“Much of this nation’s foundational immigration case law has been established by Asian American legal pioneers,” Babar noted, explaining how Chinese migrants faced “widespread and systematic violence and lynchings, restrictions on their ability to attend public schools, prohibitions from testifying in court, expulsions from their homes and a legal bar from immigrating to the United States.”

EO 14160 is expected to disproportionately impact Asian American families, who represent 65% of the Asian American adult population as immigrants. Asian immigrants account for 17% of all undocumented immigrants and over 88% of H-1B visa holders — categories whose U.S.-born children would lose citizenship under the policy.

To community members fearing for their citizenship, Babar reminds them of their constitutional rights. “Our community hails from many different countries of origin and with a variety of immigration statuses, and we contribute to our economy and to the fabric of [the] United States. The U.S. Constitution, not the preferences of any particular president, guarantees their citizenship,” he said.

With the Supreme Court having addressed only the scope of injunctions, the substantive constitutional questions now return to the appellate courts for resolution.