A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s latest executive order seeking to restrict birthright citizenship, reinforcing the constitutional right of people born in the United States to become American citizens.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman ruled Wednesday that Trump’s August order “is almost certainly unconstitutional.” In a 35-page decision, Boardman cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling that prevented Trump from enforcing a separate 2025 executive order aimed at limiting citizenship at birth.
“This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,”
Boardman issued the ruling in a case brought by CASA Inc., a Maryland nonprofit organization. Last week, she denied CASA’s request to block the executive order, but said the decision was based only on a technicality: The organization’s original complaint referred to Trump’s 2025 order instead of the newer order signed in August.
“This is different,”
Boardman said Friday while comparing the August order with Trump’s first order.
“This is unprecedented.”
She also indicated that she would rule in CASA’s favor after the complaint was amended, saying Trump was
“trying to rewrite the carve-outs to birthright citizenship with the stroke of a pen.”
Judge cites Fourteenth Amendment citizenship protections
In Wednesday’s ruling, Boardman reiterated her concerns about the administration’s effort to limit birthright citizenship.
“Since his second term in office began on January 20, 2025, the President has tried, through Executive Order, to upend our country’s longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship and eliminate, for large swaths of Americans, the right to citizenship by birth, a right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday evening that the ruling
“is not something that is a surprise to us.”
Blanche said the administration had designed the order with the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in mind.
“We crafted the EO around, and in concurrence, and understanding what the Supreme Court said in their decision. And so we expected— we didn’t expect this judge to say we were right,”
he said.
The attorney general added that the administration will
“continue to fight as President Trump has talked about for many years”
and
“if we have to go back to the Supreme Court, we will.”
Trump’s August order narrowed earlier birthright citizenship effort
Trump signed the latest executive order on Aug. 6. It seeks to limit who can become a U.S. citizen after being born in the country, but is narrower than the order he signed on the first day of his second term, which sought to broadly end birthright citizenship.
Opponents immediately challenged the 2025 order, arguing that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which states:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
After the Supreme Court blocked that order, Trump signed the August measure targeting birthright citizenship for certain groups, including children born to parents considered an
“alien enemy”
of the United States or to parents who work for foreign embassies.
The State Department has also proposed requiring parents to provide proof of their own citizenship or immigration status when applying for passports for their children.
