US District Judge Deborah Boardman on Wednesday blocked the president’s renewed attempt to deny citizenship to babies born on American soil. Boardman ruled that Donald Trump’s newest executive order likely violates the Constitution and defies a Supreme Court decision issued barely two months earlier.
The preliminary injunction bars federal agencies from enforcing the order against a certified class of children. At the same time, Boardman is allowing the government to continue drafting guidance on how the policy would be carried out. The class in this decision covers the same children protected in the original lawsuit: those born in the United States to parents who are in the country unlawfully or on temporary status.
Boardman, a Biden appointee, left no room for doubt about where the law stands. She wrote in her opinion granting the injunction that the new policy “could deny the right to citizenship by birth to children whom the Supreme Court declared were citizens.”
She went further, invoking the high court’s ruling by name: “Barbara is the law of the land. The President must follow it.”
What Trump’s New Order Tried To Accomplish
Trump signed the narrower replacement order on August 6, a little more than a month after his first attempt collapsed at the Supreme Court. It directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born to noncitizen parents if either parent is deemed an “alien enemy” or a “foreign government employee,” or if the administration decides the birth amounts to birth tourism.
The White House framed the action as tightening existing law and narrowing recognized exceptions to the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to anyone born on US soil regardless of the immigration status of their parents. Boardman was unpersuaded. She wrote that the administration had advanced a “distorted interpretation” of the Supreme Court’s ruling and that the new order is “almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class.”
The Supreme Court Already Settled This Fight
Trump signed his first birthright citizenship order immediately after returning to office in January 2025. That version sought to deny citizenship to babies of parents who are in the country unlawfully or visiting on temporary status, and it drew swift legal challenges from immigrant families, advocacy groups, and a coalition of states.
The Supreme Court struck down that first order on June 30 in a 6 to 3 decision, concluding it was unconstitutional and reaffirming what the 14th Amendment has meant for more than a century: children born on American soil are citizens, no matter their parents’ immigration status.
Rather than accept that outcome, the administration returned weeks later with the revised order now blocked in Maryland. A second challenge to the new policy is pending before a federal judge in New Hampshire.
Trump Officials Vow Another Supreme Court Showdown
Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday that the administration crafted the new order with the Supreme Court’s decision in mind and anticipated the loss.
“We didn’t expect this judge to say we were right and so this is not something that is a surprise to us,” Blanche said, adding, “If we have to go back to the Supreme Court, we will.”
Trump has made ending birthright citizenship a signature goal of his second term, and courts have now blocked both of his attempts. The 14th Amendment was written after the Civil War to guarantee that no politician, not even a president, gets to decide which American babies count as citizens. For now, a federal judge has reminded this administration that the Constitution, not an executive order, has the final word.
