A federal judge appointed by President Biden has temporarily blocked President Trump's latest executive orders on birthright citizenship and birth tourism, ruling they conflict with a Supreme Court decision handed down just months earlier.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, sitting in Maryland, issued a preliminary injunction on September 2 halting enforcement of two executive orders Trump signed in August 2026. The orders sought to identify categories of U.S.-born children ineligible for automatic citizenship and directed federal agencies to stop recognizing citizenship for children born under certain conditions, including birth tourism. Boardman found the orders ran headlong into the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, which held that denying birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants and temporary foreign visitors violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
The injunction marks the second time the courts have stopped the Trump administration from restricting birthright citizenship through executive action, and it sets up another potential trip to the Supreme Court over one of the most contentious immigration questions in American law.
Trump's August 6 executive orders were drafted after the Supreme Court's June 30 decision struck down his original January 20, 2025 order, which had broadly ended birthright citizenship for children of birth tourists and illegal immigrants. The administration's revised approach tried to thread a narrower needle. One order identified specific categories of children who would not receive automatic citizenship, including children of "alien enemies," members of foreign terrorist organizations, those who lobby on behalf of foreign governments, and individuals who obtained citizenship through fraud. A second order directed the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of State to take steps to stop birth tourism and withhold recognition of citizenship for children born under those targeted conditions.
The Department of Justice argued the new orders were carefully crafted around narrow exceptions the Supreme Court left open in Trump v. Barbara. Boardman rejected that argument. She called the DOJ's reading a "distorted interpretation" of the high court's ruling, the Washington Examiner reported.
In her written opinion, Boardman left little room for ambiguity. As Breitbart reported, the judge wrote:
"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."
She also stated that the 2026 executive order is "almost certainly unconstitutional... for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth." The injunction applies to children born after February 19, 2025.
Attorney General Todd Blanche pushed back on the ruling Wednesday night during an appearance on Fox News with Laura Ingraham. Blanche argued the administration had deliberately shaped the new orders to comply with the Supreme Court's reasoning, and signaled the fight is far from over.
Blanche told Ingraham:
"We crafted the EO around, and in concurrence, and understanding what the Supreme Court said in their decision. And so we expected, we didn't expect this judge to say we were right."
He added that the administration is prepared to return to the Supreme Court if necessary. That willingness to escalate suggests the White House views the underlying legal question, whether the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to every child born on American soil regardless of circumstances, as one worth pressing, even after two consecutive losses in the lower courts.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis framed the ruling as judicial overreach. She told the New York Post that the decision came from "an activist judge appointed by Biden attempting to thwart President Trump's commonsense agenda." Bis added that "the birthright citizenship executive order is consistent with the holdings and analysis set forth by the Supreme Court."
The administration's frustration is not difficult to understand. The Supreme Court's June 30 ruling in Trump v. Barbara was decided 5-4, and some dissenting justices appeared particularly concerned about the court's findings on birth tourism, suggesting at least a faction of the high court sees room for limits that the majority did not embrace.
The Fourteenth Amendment states plainly: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." That language, ratified after the Civil War, has been interpreted for generations to grant automatic citizenship to nearly every child born on American soil. The longstanding exceptions, children of foreign diplomats and enemy combatants, are narrow and rarely contested.
Trump's executive orders tried to expand those exceptions to cover birth tourism, a practice in which foreign nationals travel to the United States specifically to give birth so their children receive American citizenship. The practice is legal under current law, but critics argue it exploits the citizenship clause in ways the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended. Vice President Vance has called the Supreme Court's birthright ruling a "major mistake" and flagged birth tourism as a growing national security concern.
The State Department has taken its own steps in the meantime. The agency recently moved to require proof of citizenship or immigration status for individuals seeking to apply for U.S. passports on behalf of their children, an administrative action that stops short of the executive orders but signals the administration's intent to tighten the process where it can.
On Capitol Hill, the issue has also gained traction through legislation. Senator Bernie Moreno has revived a 1993 immigration bill originally introduced by then-Senator Harry Reid that would restrict birthright citizenship through statute rather than executive action, a legislative route that could sidestep some of the constitutional objections the courts have raised.
Meanwhile, a separate legal challenge to the August 2026 executive orders is unfolding in New Hampshire. The details of that case, including the parties and its current status, remain unclear, but it represents yet another front in what has become a sustained legal campaign against the administration's approach.
The plaintiff in the Maryland case is CASA Inc., a nonprofit that filed suit to block the administration's latest attempt to limit birthright citizenship. Just The News reported that Boardman had expressed skepticism of the new orders during a Friday hearing before formally issuing the injunction the following week.
Boardman wrote that the court "must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President's most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship" from children in the affected class. The word "once again" underscores the pattern: the administration drafts an order, the courts block it, and the cycle restarts.
That pattern raises a practical question the courts have not yet answered. If the executive branch cannot restrict birthright citizenship by order, and Congress has not passed legislation to do so, the policy status quo holds, regardless of how many Americans believe the current system invites abuse. House Oversight has already subpoenaed a Miami doctor who ran a birth tourism business, suggesting Congress is at least investigating the scope of the problem even as the courts shut down executive remedies.
Boardman's injunction is preliminary, not final. It blocks enforcement while the case proceeds. But the strength of her language, calling the orders "almost certainly unconstitutional" and invoking the Supreme Court's authority in blunt terms, makes clear she sees little daylight between Trump's revised orders and the ones the high court already struck down.
The administration now faces a choice: appeal Boardman's injunction, wait for the New Hampshire case to develop, or take the fight directly back to the Supreme Court. Blanche has already signaled the third option is on the table.
A federal judge appointed by the last president just told the current one he cannot do what he was elected to do, and the only institution that can settle the question for good already ruled against him 5-4. The margin is narrow. The stakes are not.
