A federal judge on Wednesday reinforced the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, blocking President Donald Trump’s latest executive order to limit it. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote in a 35-page ruling that Trump’s August order seeking to limit which people born in the United States can become U.S. citizens “is almost certainly unconstitutional.” Boardman cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling that Trump could not move forward with a separate 2025 executive order seeking to limit birthright citizenship. “This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip them of their right to citizenship,” Boardman wrote. Last week, Boardman had rejected a request from the plaintiff in the case, CASA Inc., a nonprofit organization in Maryland, to block Trump’s executive order, although he noted that his refusal was only on a technicality: The original complaint cited Trump’s 2025 order, rather than the recent August order. “This is different,” Boardman said Friday, comparing the August order to the first order. “This is unprecedented.” Boardman also indicated he would rule in favor of CASA Inc. after the lawsuit was updated, saying he believed Trump is “trying to rewrite the exceptions to birthright citizenship in one fell swoop.” In Wednesday’s ruling, the judge reiterated that sentiment, writing: “Since beginning his second term in office on January 20, 2025, the President has attempted, through Executive Order, to change our country’s long tradition of birthright citizenship and eliminate, for large swaths of Americans, the right to birthright citizenship, 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 ruling. Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 6 to limit who could become U.S. citizens after being born in the country. The order was more limited than the one the president signed on the first day of his second term, which sought to broadly end birthright citizenship. That 2025 order faced immediate legal action, as opponents wrote that it went against the 14th 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 order that focused on restricting the granting of birthright citizenship to certain groups of people, including those born to parents who are considered an “enemy alien” of the United States or who work for foreign embassies. The State Department has proposed requiring parents to provide proof of their own citizenship or immigration status when applying for passports for their children.
