SAN ANTONIO – Texas health officials have asked for the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by immigrant parents who were denied birth certificates for their U.S.-born children because local authorities refused to recognize as valid certain forms of identification.
Lawyers representing the Texas Department of State Health Services said in papers filed in Austin on Wednesday that the federal court lacks jurisdiction over claims against the state agency.
Nineteen immigrant parents and 23 children filed suit against the agency, saying officials have increasingly come to refuse previously accepted consular identification cards. The state agency says such ID cards cannot be verified.
The parents, from Mexico and Central America, are not U.S. citizens. The Constitution guarantees the right of citizenship to their children because they were born in the U.S.
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