Federal judge blocks Trump's Aug. 6 order narrowing birthright citizenship, calling it "almost certainly unconstitutional"

Judge Deborah Boardman's 35-page ruling protects a previously certified nationwide class: children born in the U.S. on or after Feb. 19, 2025 whom the order would exclude, plus their parents.

A federal judge blocked President Trump's newest attempt to limit birthright citizenship. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday, Sept. 2, barring enforcement of the executive order Trump signed Aug. 6 that would deny automatic U.S. citizenship to some children born on American soil. The order targeted two narrow groups: U.S.-born children whose parents the administration classifies as "alien enemies," and children of people working for foreign embassies. Boardman wrote that the order "is almost certainly unconstitutional" and that "this Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President's most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them." The August order was a narrower rewrite of a broader January 2025 order that had already lost in court. Agencies cannot enforce it against class members while the injunction stands. Any appeal would go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

How the injunction covers people nationwide after the universal-injunction limits:

Boardman used Rule 23(b)(2), which lets one injunction cover a certified class when the government treats everyone in it the same way — not a universal injunction shielding strangers to the case.
The Supreme Court's restriction on universal injunctions left that class mechanism intact, and it upheld nationwide class relief in Trump v. Barbara.
The ruling is preliminary: it freezes enforcement while the case proceeds, and does not finally decide whether the order is constitutional.

How the injunction covers people nationwide after the universal-injunction limits:

A class action is a single lawsuit brought on behalf of everyone in a defined group. Boardman used Rule 23(b)(2), which lets one injunction cover a certified class when the government treats everyone in it the same way — not a universal injunction shielding strangers to the case.
The Supreme Court's restriction on universal injunctions left that class mechanism intact, and it upheld nationwide class relief in Trump v. Barbara.
The ruling is preliminary: it freezes enforcement while the case proceeds, and does not finally decide whether the order is constitutional.

ContextBirthright citizenship rests on the Fourteenth Amendment and United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which the government lost 6-2 after arguing a man born in San Francisco to Chinese merchant parents was not a citizen. Every administration since the 1940 and 1952 citizenship statutes recognized the rule, excepting only children of accredited diplomats and hostile occupying forces. That old diplomat exception is why the August order's second target group — children of foreign embassy workers — sits closer to settled law than its first. The Supreme Court struck down Trump's broader January 2025 order 6-3, largely because 8 U.S.C. 1401(a) — the statute that writes the traditional rule into federal law — already covered the question. A ruling on statutory grounds decides less than a constitutional one: it says the order conflicts with a law Congress wrote, without settling what the Fourteenth Amendment itself requires. That left room for the administration to try a narrower order, and it leaves the constitutional question open in this case too. Boardman's answer so far is that the new order is "almost certainly unconstitutional," but that is a preliminary judgment, not a final one.