Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s New Birthright-Citizenship Order for Certified Class

Boardman issues the injunction challengers sought

GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge issued a classwide preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its latest birthright-citizenship executive order against children already protected by a certified class action.

U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman ruled that the August 6 order is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the class because the Supreme Court already determined that those children are citizens at birth.

The ruling is a material change from the procedural development this article reported August 29. Boardman initially declined emergency relief because the lawsuit's operative complaint did not yet challenge the new executive order. She allowed the plaintiffs to supplement the complaint, and they filed the supplement and renewed injunction request later that day.

After expedited briefing, Boardman granted preliminary relief on September 2. Reuters, the Associated Press and CBS News independently reported the ruling. The White House did not immediately provide those outlets with a response.

Read the source: U.S. District Court: September 2 memorandum opinion granting the preliminary injunction ↗

What the injunction blocks

The injunction bars the defendant agencies and participating officials from enforcing or applying Executive Order 14418 against any member of the certified class. It also prohibits them from interfering with, denying or failing to recognize a class member's citizenship.

The defendants include the State Department, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Social Security Administration and the United States. The court did not issue an injunction directly against the president.

The class generally covers children born in the United States after February 19, 2025, whose mothers were unlawfully present or lawfully but temporarily present and whose fathers were neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents at the time of birth.

Boardman did not block subsection 2(d), concerning births in territories or territorial waters where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute. She also left Section 3(b) in effect, allowing agencies to prepare and publish implementation guidance.

Read the source: Reuters: Judge blocks Trump's newest order limiting birthright citizenship ↗

Supreme Court precedent drives the ruling

Boardman relied on the Supreme Court's June 30 decision in Trump v. Barbara. That ruling held that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present satisfy both requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause and are citizens at birth.

The administration argued that the Supreme Court did not eliminate every possible exception to birthright citizenship and that the new lawsuit was premature because agency guidance had not yet been issued. Boardman rejected the ripeness argument, finding that the executive order's own text directed agencies to deny citizenship documents to broadly described categories of children.

The judge did not issue a final facial ruling on each category in the executive order. She instead decided the narrower question before her: whether the order is likely unconstitutional when applied to children in the already certified class.

Read the source: Associated Press: Boardman issues preliminary injunction against the new order ↗

The August 6 order reaches beyond diplomats' children

Executive Order 14418 directs agencies not to recognize citizenship when neither parent is a citizen and a parent falls within one of several listed categories. Those categories include people designated as alien enemies, some foreign-government or international-organization employees and parents accused of fraud or a commercial transaction intended to obtain citizenship.

The plaintiffs argue that those categories reach far beyond historically narrow exceptions involving diplomats, foreign public ships and children born during a hostile occupation. The administration maintains that the order addresses circumstances outside the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee.

Boardman concluded that the certified class is likely to succeed because the Supreme Court already resolved the citizenship status of its members. Her injunction preserves that status while the case proceeds.

Read the source: CBS News: Injunction, class scope and administration arguments ↗

Confirmed now — and what remains unresolved

Confirmed: the September 2 preliminary injunction protects the certified class; covered federal agencies cannot deny or refuse to recognize those children's citizenship under the August 6 order; and agencies may still issue implementation guidance.

Not decided: the lawsuit's final outcome, the constitutionality of every hypothetical application of Executive Order 14418, whether the administration will appeal or whether later guidance will prompt either side to seek a modification of the injunction.

A preliminary injunction is legally consequential, but it is not the final judgment in the case. The administration may continue defending the policy and may ask the court to modify or dissolve the injunction if circumstances change.

Families should rely on the written injunction and current guidance from the agency responsible for a particular citizenship document. Viral claims that the executive order has ended birthright citizenship nationwide—or that the entire order has been permanently erased—go beyond what the court decided Wednesday.

Read the source: Federal Register: Executive Order 14418 ↗

About the image

The lead image is an authentic June 1, 2024 photograph of the United States Supreme Court building by Wikimedia Commons contributor 颐园居, who licensed it under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.

The photograph is used as constitutional-law context. It does not depict the September 2 Maryland district-court ruling or any party to the lawsuit.

Read the source: National Archives: Fourteenth Amendment ↗