A US federal court on Thursday granted a nationwide injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship, delivering a significant victory to civil rights groups in an escalating legal battle that has already reached the Supreme Court.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution establishes that: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This provision has historically been understood to grant citizenship automatically to most children born in the US, with rare exceptions such as for children born to parents whose diplomatic immunity exempts them from being subject to US legal jurisdiction. Critics of birthright citizenship argue the Amendment should be interpreted more narrowly, excluding children born in the US to parents lacking relevant legal status.
Upon returning to the Oval Office in January, Trump issued an executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship as applied to children born in the US to parents who were either undocumented or in the US temporarily, such as on tourist visas.
Advocacy groups sued for injunctive relief to prevent the order from taking effect. That case led the US Supreme Court to rule in Trump v. CASA that courts should consider narrowing nationwide protections previously provided in initial challenges to the birthright citizenship order. Though the Supreme Court had limited universal injunctions in the ruling, it left class actions open. Whereas universal injunctions have faced criticism for bypassing established legal procedures and giving courts excessive power, class actions are viewed as more legitimate because they operate within a well-defined regulatory framework that properly includes all affected parties.
Civil liberties organizations then filed a class action lawsuit in June challenging the executive order. The plaintiffs—including an expecting Honduran asylum seeker, a Taiwanese student visa holder whose child was born in April, and a Brazilian man whose child was born in March—argue that the executive order violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the order issued Thursday, Judge Joseph N. Laplante of the US District Court for the District of New Hampshire found for the class petitioners. The court enjoined multiple federal agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, State and Agriculture, as well as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, from enforcing Trump’s executive order.
The Trump administration now has seven days to decide whether to appeal the injunction to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which could potentially stay the ruling and allow the executive order to proceed. If the government does not appeal or is unsuccessful, the nationwide injunction will take effect well before the policy’s planned July 27 implementation date.
Given the Supreme Court’s prior involvement in Trump v. CASA and the fundamental constitutional questions at stake, the case could return to the nation’s highest court for a definitive ruling on whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship guarantee can be restricted by executive action.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with explanatory details about universal injunctions and class action lawsuits.
