A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, a constitutionally enshrined right granting automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

District Court Judge John Coughenour issued the temporary restraining order on Thursday in Seattle, Washington, preventing the government from implementing what he called a “blatantly unconstitutional” measure.

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“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, and I can’t remember another case where the question presented was this clear,” Coughenour said. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?”

Trump’s order has been viewed with alarm by rights groups that depict it as a fundamental assault on the concept of US citizenship.

The executive order threatened to affect not just children born in the US to undocumented parents but also children of immigrants legally in the country.

Monday’s order, part of a flurry of measures that Trump signed to restrict immigration, was quickly challenged in court.

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As many as five lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship, encompassing officials from 22 states and several civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

Thursday’s temporary restraining order came as the result of a complaint filed by four Democrat-led states: Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. It was the first of the suits to reach the hearing stage.

“Under this order, babies being born today don’t count as US citizens,” Washington Assistant Attorney General Lane Polozola argued at the start of the hearing.

For more than a century, the Supreme Court has also upheld the concept of birthright citizenship, pointing to the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

It states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

The Trump administration, however, has maintained that birthright citizenship encourages irregular migration into the US.

It also has argued that the 14th Amendment was not meant to apply to people with undocumented parents because they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US.

Trump’s Department of Justice described Monday’s executive order as an “integral part” of the government’s efforts to address the “ongoing crisis at the southern border”.

The order instructs the Social Security Administration to not issue Social Security cards or numbers to children born after February 19 if either of their parents are not citizens or legal permanent residents.

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That, in turn, makes those children vulnerable to deportation. Without a Social Security card, an important identification document, the children may also struggle to access basic government services.

The US is one of about 30 countries in the world with birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment was implemented after the Civil War to extend citizenship to Black people who had previously been enslaved.