A federal judge temporarily blocked the Donald Trump administration’s attempt to impose new restrictions on automatic birthright citizenship after it lost a previous legal battle in the US Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, a US judge in Maryland ruled that an August executive order by President Donald Trump, which expands categories of non‑citizen parents whose children would not qualify for citizenship, is likely unlawful. The new exemptions would apply, among others, to those involved in a «commercial agreement to give birth in the US. This latest setback for Trump’s hard‑line immigration policy sets the stage for the birthright citizenship debate to return to the Supreme Court.
Reactions and next steps
The US Department of Justice may appeal to a federal appeals court to overturn the district judge’s injunction and allow officials to proceed with the president’s plan while litigation continues. US District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that the administration was advancing a «distorted interpretation» of the Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down Trump’s initial executive order on birthright citizenship restrictions.
She noted that the president’s latest actions would strip status from children in a group she had previously certified as a plaintiff class. This includes children of non‑citizen parents who are not lawfully present in the US or are in the country on temporary visas. «The Supreme Court has already determined that children in this group are citizens by birth», Deborah Boardman wrote in her decision granting a preliminary injunction. «This court must again issue a preliminary injunction against the president’s latest attempt to deny them citizenship».
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bies said, «This is just another decision by a Biden‑appointed activist judge trying to block the implementation of President Trump’s commonsense birthright citizenship policy. The executive order on birthright citizenship aligns with the findings and analysis set out by the Supreme Court».
Shana Hader, legal director of We Are CASA, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit in Maryland, said, «The White House must recognize that it will not succeed in stripping children of their citizenship, evading binding court rulings, or placing the president’s anti‑immigration policy above the Constitution».
Previous rulings and new orders
In June, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s initial executive order restricting birthright citizenship, a significant blow to the court’s conservative majority, which had largely sided with the administration over the past year and a half. «Citizenship then and now has been the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community», Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. «The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment extended this promise to every free‑born person in this country. We honor that promise today».
Trump vowed to find other ways to restrict citizenship. In early August, he signed two executive orders targeting so‑called «birth tourism»—a term the administration uses to describe non‑citizens traveling to the US to secure citizenship for their children. One of these orders, which is not central to the latest lawsuits, directs US agencies to adopt new rules or update existing ones to allow immigration authorities to deny or revoke visas and otherwise prevent foreign nationals from entering the US «for the purpose of giving birth to a child on American soil».
The second order addresses categories of individuals whose children would not qualify for citizenship. In addition to the «commercial agreement» exemption, the order introduces new exceptions for children born in the US to a broader range of foreign nationals, including those working for their governments or other international organizations in the US, members of designated terrorist groups, or those engaged in fraud.
Opponents accused the administration of ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling and making another attempt to rewrite the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for nearly everyone born on US soil. They challenged the president’s new policy as part of existing class‑action lawsuits in New Hampshire and Maryland, which concerned the initial, now‑defunct citizenship restrictions imposed by Trump. A judge in New Hampshire is also considering a request to block key provisions of Trump’s new executive order.
The US Department of Justice argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because they had not shown that the existing class‑action lawsuits cover the families affected by the president’s latest actions. The government also claimed the lawsuits were premature, as federal agencies had not yet taken steps to implement Trump’s order, and the Supreme Court had not definitively ruled out the possibility of expanding birthright citizenship exemptions.
According to Bloomberg
