- By Adam Shanks | Examiner staff writer |
- Jan 21, 2025 Updated 6 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)

San Francisco joined a coalition of states Tuesday in one of two lawsuits that aims to block President Donald Trump’s attempts to revoke birthright citizenship in the United States.
Immediately upon taking office Monday, Trump signed an executive order that would upend the 14th Amendment and the historical precedent that, with few exceptions, a person born in the U.S. is an American citizen.
After Trump signed the order, San Francisco and nearly two dozen state attorneys general swiftly took legal action to oppose Trump, who would not grant citizenship to those born to mothers who lack legal status in the United States or are here on a temporary basis.
The City joined 18 state attorneys general suing Trump in a Massachusetts federal court, while four other states are suing Trump in Washington state.
The legal battle about to ensue is especially pertinent in San Francisco, where the percentage of residents who are foreign-born typically exceeds 33%.
The Examiner sat down with San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu hours after the lawsuit was filed Tuesday to discuss its merits, his office’s reactions to Trump’s bevy of executive orders and The City’s place in history. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Why was it important for you that the city join this lawsuit given that there’s 18 states already involved? The story of birthright citizenship is as San Francisco as they come. San Francisco has a unique connection with the constitutional principle of birthright citizenship, because one of our own citizens in the late 1800s stood up for his constitutional rights.
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco on Sacramento Street to immigrant parents. In 1895, he was traveling back from China to his home in San Francisco when he was detained, ostensibly under the Chinese Exclusion Act. It happened during an anti-immigrant era with significant anti-Chinese bigotry.
Despite the era and the anti-Asian bigotry and the fact that it was the U.S. Solicitor General who was prosecuting his case, he had the courage to stand up for his rights. He prevailed.
That’s the historical connection to this issue. Can you articulate the present consequences should this be carried out? This issue is personal to me as the first child born to my immigrant parents. Birthright citizenship is personal to a large majority of San Franciscans who are either immigrants or children of immigrants.
This is going to be harmful to our economy as well as create intense chaos for so many in our communities.
The executive order is going to result in a significant loss of federal funding to local governments like San Francisco. For example, San Francisco is responsible for administering federal-state-funded public benefit programs like CalWORKS and CalFresh. We receive funding based in part on the number of eligible recipients, and eligibility is determined by having a valid Social Security number.
So without Social Security numbers, we can’t verify otherwise-eligible newborns who may qualify for these programs. So this executive order is going to result in the direct loss of federal funding to San Francisco to provide aid and administer these programs, and without that funding, we still have to bear the inherent costs of caring for our residents.
Overturning this 127-year-old legal precedent is a ruthless attack on our newborns and future generations of Americans. Ending birthright citizenship will impede their integration and assimilation into society, their educational future, which hurts all of us.
Essentially, what this is going to do is it’ll deny some children the same basic rights that other children in our country have, which will create a permanent multigenerational underclass of those who will have been born in the U.S., but will have never lived anywhere else and will effectively be stateless.
These are children who won’t be able to naturalize or obtain citizenship from another country. They’ll live under constant threat of deportation, and as they age, they won’t be able to work legally or vote. They’ll have limited ability to travel and will be challenged in accessing health care. So there’s a whole parade of horribles that will happen for this class of citizens.

The [counterargument] is that you’re demonstrating that these people are a drain on public resources. San Francisco being a city with a large immigrant population, do you feel that there is any truth to that claim? Well, these are immigrants who are paying their taxes. At this moment they are citizens who are paying their taxes, and we know that immigrants provide much more in taxes than they are taking away as far as services, but it will increase our costs.
Have you spoken with Mayor Lurie about this action at all? Do you feel like you’re in lockstep with the administration, or no? I have spoken to the mayor and he is supportive.
Are [there] any other executive orders, or any other actions taken [out] of the many yesterday that President Trump took, that your office is keeping an eye on, or potentially reacting to? As you can imagine, my lawyers have been frantically reviewing and analyzing since they’ve been coming out. There’s a lot of language and in many executive orders that we’re concerned about and monitoring.
Many of the executive orders instruct his agencies and cabinet secretaries to start doing things and to start collecting data, which will likely lead to actions that we may need to defend our city against.
So it’s premature to say at this moment, but so many of our communities are under threat because of the first round of the executive orders issued yesterday. Our trans community, immigrants for sure, our environment.
I was going to ask you to interpret the executive order he signed, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” which targets sanctuary jurisdictions like San Francisco. It is a battle that we’ve fought before and we’ll likely have to fight again. That language certainly caught our eye and has been a topic of discussion in the last 24 hours, and we will certainly monitor what the attorney general and the head of Homeland Security decide to do with that.
Given the breadth of what [Trump] did [Tuesday], and could continue to do in the coming weeks, months, years, what capacity does your office have to absorb all of it, interpret all of it, you know? We asked Sacramento for resources to assist us at this time. We appreciate that Gov. Newsom called for a special session to bolster the bulwarks of California in this space and are very supportive of the $50 million that the legislature and the governor will be providing to our attorney general and legal nonprofit organizations that are defending immigrants. But at this moment, we do not yet have assurances that we’ll be receiving funds, so we are in conversations as we speak with legislators to see if that can change.
I am the chair of the California Civil Prosecutors Coalition, which comprises the largest city attorney and county counsel offices in the state. Many of us were deeply involved in defending our cities and counties against Trump 1.0 and have geared up again, and we all need resources.

I am repeating myself, but why is it important that San Francisco as a city take action in these cases, instead of just allowing the attorney general of California to to take that on? Donald Trump has threatened to target local programs, and local institutions, including public hospitals, local law enforcement, local grants and funding that only San Francisco has the standing to defend in court.
So there will be plenty of times when we’ll work lockstep with our attorney general. There’ll be plenty of times when AG [Rob] Bonta can act to protect us, but there will also be times when we will need to stand up for ourselves.
How are you feeling, in terms of confidence, about the merit of the case that you’re bringing against President Trump? Extremely confident. This is constitutional bedrock, based in the 14th Amendment that has been constitutional precedent for 127 years. We are optimistic that any judge who looks at this will agree with us.
Are you concerned by the ways in which “Trump 1.0” was successful at reshaping the judiciary in his image and that it might be a different set of judges? We’re in a new day, and you’re entirely correct that there are many more Trump-appointed judges and justices sitting on the federal judiciary — but all of them swore to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. There could not be a more clear example of an embedded constitutional principle.