Federal judge in Maryland blocks Trump's second executive order restricting birthright citizenship

Today’s Focus

A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s second attempt to restrict birthright citizenship by executive order, ruling that the policy is likely unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, issued a 35-page preliminary injunction in a case brought by immigration advocacy groups that had also challenged Trump’s earlier order from 2025, The Hill reported.

The order at issue, signed August 6, targeted what Trump has called “birth tourism,” directing federal agencies to deny citizenship documentation to children born in the United States to mothers who entered on tourist visas allegedly intending to give birth here.

“The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth,’” Boardman wrote, according to The Guardian. She added that the August order “is almost certainly unconstitutional.”

The ruling follows a Supreme Court decision earlier in the Trump term that rejected the administration’s initial effort to narrow the citizenship clause. In that case, the justices did not overturn the long-standing reading of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil.

Shana Khader, legal director at We Are CASA, one of the Maryland-based plaintiff groups, said the administration “has lost before this court, lost before the Supreme Court, and lost again today,” per The Guardian.

The injunction blocks enforcement nationwide for the certified class of affected children while litigation proceeds. The Justice Department is expected to appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The order is part of a broader Trump immigration agenda that includes expanded deportations and the removal of temporary protected status for nationals of more than a dozen countries, according to reporting from AFP cited by The Guardian.

The Debate

Supporters argue

Trump and his allies contend that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause was never intended to cover children of people in the country on short-term visas or without authorization. The White House has argued the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excludes those whose primary allegiance lies elsewhere.

Trump said in signing the August order that “birth tourism” is being exploited by wealthy foreign nationals who fly in to secure U.S. passports for their children, then leave. Administration officials have framed the policy as closing a loophole rather than rewriting the Constitution.

Conservative legal scholars associated with the Claremont Institute, including John Eastman, have long argued that the original public meaning of the 14th Amendment supports a narrower reading. Heritage Foundation legal analysts have echoed that the clause was drafted in 1868 to address freed slaves, not modern visa categories.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said Congress or the courts should revisit the doctrine and that executive action is a legitimate way to force the question back to the Supreme Court for a definitive ruling.

Critics argue

Immigration groups and constitutional scholars say the ruling reaffirms settled law dating to the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that children born on U.S. soil to noncitizen parents are citizens.

Khader of We Are CASA said the administration’s repeated losses show the policy is not a close legal question. The American Civil Liberties Union, a plaintiff in parallel litigation, has argued that no executive order can rewrite a constitutional guarantee.

Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), have called the executive orders an attempt to strip citizenship from U.S.-born children and warned of a two-tier system based on parents’ status. House Democrats this week rejected a Republican-proposed constitutional amendment that would have codified a narrower reading, The Guardian reported.

Legal groups also argue the order raises due-process problems by directing agencies to deny documents such as passports and Social Security numbers to newborns before any hearing on their status.

What the experts say

The prevailing view among constitutional scholars is that the text of the 14th Amendment and the Wong Kim Ark precedent make birthright citizenship difficult to alter without a constitutional amendment. Garrett Epps, a legal scholar formerly at the University of Baltimore, has written that the “jurisdiction” clause historically excluded only children of foreign diplomats and members of hostile occupying forces.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded in a 2025 report that executive action alone cannot redefine the citizenship clause and that any change would likely require either a constitutional amendment or a reversal of Wong Kim Ark by the Supreme Court.

Pew Research Center estimated in 2016 that roughly 250,000 babies were born in the U.S. to unauthorized immigrant parents that year, down from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007. Data specific to tourist-visa births is limited, though the State Department has issued guidance since 2020 instructing consular officers to deny B-1/B-2 visas when the primary purpose is childbirth.

By the Numbers

35: pages in Judge Boardman’s preliminary injunction ruling, according to The Guardian.

August 6, 2026: date Trump signed the executive order targeting “birth tourism,” per The Hill.

1898: year the Supreme Court decided United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the case establishing modern birthright citizenship doctrine.

3: Trump administration losses on birthright citizenship cited by plaintiffs, including two district court rulings and one Supreme Court decision, per The Guardian.

250,000: estimated U.S. births to unauthorized immigrant parents in 2016, according to Pew Research Center.

12+: number of countries whose nationals have lost deportation protections under the broader Trump immigration agenda, according to AFP reporting cited by The Guardian.

1868: year the 14th Amendment was ratified, per the National Archives.