Federal Court Issues Preliminary Injunction Blocking Trump's New Birthright Citizenship Executive Order
In a major judicial blow to the Trump administration's immigration agenda, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, blocking the enforcement of President Trump's August 6, 2026 executive order that sought to narrow birthright citizenship1.
The ruling in CASA v. Trump represents a swift and decisive defeat for the administration's second attempt to restrict citizenship for children born on American soil to undocumented or temporary-resident parents. This executive order was issued shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court's June 29, 2026 decision in Trump v. Barbara, which unequivocally reaffirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to all children born in the United States, regardless of their parents' immigration status.
In her opinion, Judge Boardman found that the administration’s new executive order was likely unconstitutional as applied to the certified class of immigrant families and advocacy organizations.
"The Court’s decision is simple and clear: The children of immigrants whom the Supreme Court held in Barbara have a constitutional right to citizenship cannot be deprived of that citizenship under any Executive Order. The Court rightly rejected the government’s attempt to insert its own exceptions into the Supreme Court’s ruling about the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Advocacy groups including We Are CASA, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) celebrated the decision, noting that the constant threat of losing citizenship had severely destabilized the lives of immigrant families.
"When it comes to attacking birthright citizenship, the Trump administration has lost before this court, lost before the Supreme Court, and lost again today. The White House must recognize it will not succeed in stripping children of their right to citizenship, evading binding court decisions or placing the president’s anti-immigrant agenda above the Constitution."
The preliminary injunction ensures that the status quo of birthright citizenship remains fully protected nationwide as the class-action litigation continues.
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An instance of A constitutional failure to end birthright citizenship forces an executive shift toward collateral enforcement. — The court blocked the administration's collateral executive attempt to bypass the Fourteenth Amendment by narrowing the definitions of who is entitled to citizenship at birth. ↩︎