A Biden-appointed judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump‘s latest executive order seeking to limit birthright citizenship, setting up another high-profile legal battle over the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In a 35-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction against the Oval Office’s Aug. 6 executive order, which was issued a month after the Supreme Court affirmed birthright citizenship in its ruling in Barbara v. Trump. The injunction is the first to halt Trump’s revised birthright citizenship order since the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in June.
Boardman previously blocked Trump’s original birthright citizenship executive order before the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue.
Trump’s order sought to limit birthright citizenship for children whose parents are deemed alien enemies, including members of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and children whose foreign parents paid a surrogate in the U.S. to give birth, among several other restrictions. The executive order prompted Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
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“The 2026 Executive Order is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth,” Boardman wrote in her ruling. “This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them.”
The White House rejected Boardman’s ruling as the work of an “activist judge appointed by Biden attempting to thwart President Trump’s commonsense agenda.”
“The birthright citizenship executive order is consistent with the holdings and analysis set forth by the Supreme Court,” Lauren Bis, White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
In a 5-4 decision on the constitutional question of birthright citizenship, the high court held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the country are “citizens at birth” under the Fourteenth Amendment in Barbara v. Trump.
While the Supreme Court has acknowledged exceptions to birthright citizenship, such as children of foreign diplomats or children born during an enemy’s hostile occupation of U.S. soil, Boardman rejected Trump’s latest executive order targeting children born to alleged alien enemies. She agreed with the plaintiffs’ concerns over the Trump administration’s “broad view of who qualifies as an enemy.” The plaintiffs alleged that the Trump administration had “sometimes resting its conclusions on false or speculative allegations, or even tenuous markers like tattoos or family affiliations.”
Boardman pointed to two plaintiffs — Andrea, who fled an area of Mexico where a designated cartel operates and whose child’s father has a relative in the group, and Monica, a Venezuelan woman who fears her family could be wrongly linked to Tren de Aragua.
“Children whose parents may “rightly or wrongfully” be deemed by the government to be alien enemies face a credible threat of “being denied or stripped of their birthright citizenship… even though they do not fall within a recognized exception to birthright citizenship,” Boardman wrote.
However, Abhi Kambli, a former Justice Department official said that Boardman was speculating on how the Trump administration could incorrectly bar someone from citizenship based upon being part of a foreign terrorist organization.
“Legally, where that falls short is that it’s a facial challenge to the entire executive order,” Kambli told Fox News Digital. “So, in legal terms, when something’s a facial challenge, you have to demonstrate that it’s unlawful in all of its applications, and not just the edge, the borderline cases.”
“She didn’t want to wade into the territory of whether that fits as an exception generally within Trump v. Barbara, but she said that based on how they’ve interpreted it in the past and in terms of what happened with Tren de Aragua and other organizations, she bought into plaintiff speculation that maybe they’ll get it wrong this time, and then that’ll affect their kids, and then that’s why it should get barred,” Kambli continued.
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Boardman used the First Circuit’s language to find that denying citizenship under the new executive order would cause irreparable harm — one of the requirements for issuing a preliminary injunction.
“The loss of birthright citizenship — even if temporary and later restored at the conclusion of litigation has cascading effects’ that will ‘very likely leave permanent scars’ on the child and their family,” the ruling stated.
Monica celebrated the preliminary injunction.
“During my pregnancy, I felt so much anxiety over the fact that my child could be born stateless,” Monica, said in a statement. “For now, my child and children like mine are protected and guaranteed U.S. citizenship. But I know this isn’t over. The threat to birthright citizenship is still out there. I’ll keep fighting for permanent protection for my child, and for every child born in this country.”
“When it comes to attacking birthright citizenship, the Trump administration has lost before this court, lost before the Supreme Court, and lost again today,” Shana Khader, Legal Director at We Are CASA, said in a statement. “The White House must recognize it will not succeed in stripping children of their right to citizenship, evading binding court decisions or placing the president’s anti-immigrant agenda above the Constitution. We are very proud to continue this fight alongside the families who have endured more than a year of fear and uncertainty and still refuse to surrender their children’s constitutional rights.”
