A federal judge, appointed by former President Joe Biden, is blocking President Donald Trump from narrowing birthright citizenship to exclude the United States-born children of foreign enemies of the U.S., members of foreign terrorist organizations, and others who lobby on behalf of foreign governments.
On Thursday, Judge Deborah Boardman, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland by Biden in 2021, issued a preliminary injunction — stopping Trump’s executive order to limit birthright citizenship to exclude certain classes of foreign nationals.
“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. This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,” Boardman writes:
The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are “citizens at birth.” Barbara is the law of the land. The President must follow it. The plaintiffs have established a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the 2026 Executive Order violates the class members’ Fourteenth Amendment right to citizenship. [Emphasis added]
In June, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a 5-4 ruling in Trump v. Barbara that barring birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens and temporary foreign visitors is a violation of the 14th Amendment.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the principal dissenting opinion for the minority, argued that the 14th Amendment’s phrase “not subject to any foreign power” in regard to guaranteeing citizenship to those born in the U.S. “excluded from citizenship children of foreign temporary visitors, who were subject to the power of their home nation.”
As a result of the decision, Trump, in August, signed an executive order to narrow who is privileged with birthright American citizenship, excluding the U.S.-born children of foreign terrorists and employees of foreign governments, among other classes of people.
The case is CASA v. Trump, No. DLB-25-201 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Hellbound and Down 