Federal Court Halts Trump’s Controversial Executive Order Restricting US Birthright Citizenship

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a new executive order limiting the number of people eligible for birthright citizenship, delivering another legal setback to President Donald Trump's efforts to curtail the constitutional right in the wake of a US Supreme Court ruling against his earlier attempt. US District Judge Deborah Boardman, sitting in Greenbelt, Maryland, issued a preliminary injunction at the request of immigrant rights advocates who had previously secured a ruling from her blocking enforcement of Trump's original 2025 executive order on the same issue.

The ruling traces back to the Supreme Court's decision on June 30, which rejected Trump's initial effort to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents were neither American citizens nor legal permanent residents, commonly known as green card holders. The court found that the effort violated the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which confers citizenship on those born in the United States who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." The decision, reached in a 6-3 ruling in the case Barbara v. Trump, reaffirmed the long-standing constitutional guarantee that nearly all children born on US soil automatically receive citizenship, regardless of their parents' nationality or immigration status.

Following that defeat, Trump signed two new executive orders on August 6, one targeting so-called "birth tourism," the practice in which women travel to the United States specifically to give birth so their children can obtain automatic citizenship, and another that expanded the categories of non-citizens whose children would not automatically receive citizenship, including children of individuals classified as "alien enemies" or employees of foreign governments. The administration framed the orders as addressing exceptions it argued remained open following the Supreme Court's June ruling.

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In her 35-page opinion issued Wednesday, Boardman rejected that argument, writing that Trump's latest order "is almost certainly unconstitutional" given that the Supreme Court had already determined that children within the certified class covered by the earlier litigation are citizens at birth. She characterized the administration's position as relying on a distorted reading of the June ruling, and stated that the president has, since the start of his second term, repeatedly tried through executive action to unwind the country's longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship.

Her order bars federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration, from taking steps that would undermine the citizenship status of children covered under the injunction. Boardman, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, had also blocked Trump's original 2025 order at an earlier stage of the litigation, making Wednesday's ruling her second intervention against the administration's efforts to restrict birthright citizenship. The case stems from a class-action lawsuit brought by immigrant rights groups and affected families who argued that Trump's orders placed their children's citizenship status at risk in direct violation of constitutional protections.

The ruling represents a continuation of the broader legal battle over birthright citizenship that has played out across multiple courts since the start of Trump's second term, with the administration's repeated attempts to narrow the scope of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause facing consistent rejection from federal judges. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest ruling, though further appeals or additional executive action on the issue remain possible as the underlying litigation continues.

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