A federal judge reinforced the constitutional right to birthright citizenship Wednesday, 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 U.S.can become American citizens “is almost certainly unconstitutional.” Boardman cited the U.S.
Supreme Court’s June ruling that Trump could not go forward with a separate 2025 executive order that sought to limit 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 wrote.
Last week, Boardman had denied a request from the plaintiff in the case, CASA Inc., a nonprofit organization in Maryland, to block Trump’s executive order, though she noted that her denial was only due to 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 that she would rule in favor of CASA Inc.after the complaint was updated, saying that she believed Trump is “trying to rewrite the carve-outs to birthright citizenship with the stroke of a pen.”In Wednesday’s ruling, the judge reiterated that sentiment, writing: “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 ruling.
Trump signed an executive order Aug.6 to limit who could become U.S.
citizens after being born in the country.The order was more narrow...