President Trump’s second attempt at an executive order limiting birthright citizenship was blocked by a federal judge, who said the president was trying to eat away at citizenship for some of the people the Supreme Court just ruled were entitled to it.
Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee to the court in Maryland, issued a preliminary injunction forbidding the government from refusing to recognize citizenship based on Mr. Trump’s order.
“The government cannot claim a legitimate interest in enforcing an executive order that is likely unconstitutional,” the judge wrote.
Mr. Trump’s order, issued last month, said children born to members of terrorist organizations and those born to parents who work for foreign governments should not be granted automatic citizenship.
Previously, Mr. Trump had tried to bar birthright citizenship for children born to parents who were illegal immigrants or temporary visitors.
The Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling in the Barbara case in June, rejected those plans, saying the 14th Amendment provided citizenship for nearly every child born on American soil.
Mr. Trump was harshly critical of that ruling, but vowed to try to find wiggle room.
The crux of the debate is who falls outside the “jurisdiction” of the U.S., and therefore outside the citizenship guarantee.
The Supreme Court has recognized only a few narrow exceptions, including children born to foreign ambassadors and born to women in enemy armies who occupy U.S. soil.
Mr. Trump argued terrorists were akin to occupying armies, and his definition of people who worked for foreign governments built on the foreign diplomat exception.
Judge Boardman said she didn’t need to get into that sort of line-drawing.
“Even a cursory review of the 2026 executive order’s carveouts to birthright citizenship reveals they bear little to no resemblance to the ‘narrow exceptions’ to the rule of citizenship by birth recognized by the Supreme Court in Barbara,” the judge said.
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