Federal judge blocks Trump’s new birthright citizenship order
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by Sophie Brams - 09/02/26 7:35 PM ET
A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday blocked an executive order from President Trump that again seeks to restrict birthright citizenship.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman granted a preliminary injunction in a case brought by two immigration advocacy groups that had also challenged the Trump administration’s initial attempt last year to limit who is eligible for automatic citizenship at birth.
Boardman wrote in a 35-page opinion that the new directive was “almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class,” pointing to the Supreme Court decision in June that struck down Trump’s Day 1 executive order.
“This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,” Boardman, a Biden appointee, wrote.
Her order prohibits the administration from enforcing the new restriction against any child born after February 19, 2025, to one or more parents who were not lawfully in the country at the time.
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
Five of the Supreme Court’s justices affirmed in June that the 14th Amendment guarantees automatic citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil, including those born to parents who are in the country unlawfully. Justice Brett Kavanaugh also voted to block Trump’s order but only on statutory grounds.
About a month later, the president issued a new pair of executive orders aimed at curbing what the administration refers to as “birth tourism,” which involves traveling to the country for the primary purpose of giving birth on U.S. soil.
The orders also seek to expand the definition of who cannot get automatic citizenship to include children born to a parent who is an “alien enemy or member of foreign terrorist organizations,” as well as several other categories of individuals.
CASA, Inc. and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Inc., which secured a nationwide injunction from the same court last year, asked the judge to intervene again.
The Justice Department defended the new restrictions as narrower than what was previously struck down and claimed that the plaintiffs’ case was premature because the president’s order has not yet been implemented.
Boardman noted that she found those arguments “unpersuasive” and said that the administration was relying on a “distorted interpretation” of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Though the defendants may not like it, the Barbara Court’s conclusion was clear: The children in the class ‘satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause’—place and jurisdiction—and they are thus ‘citizens at birth,’” the judge wrote.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/6067819-judge-blocks-trump-birthright-order/
