Federal Judge Blocks Trump's Second Attempt to Restrict Birthright Citizenship
On Wednesday, September 2, 2026, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration's August 6, 2026 executive order targeting "birth tourism" and attempting to narrow birthright citizenship. Boardman ruled that the new executive order was "almost certainly unconstitutional," dealing a quick defeat to the administration's revised attempt to restrict citizenship at birth.
The ruling follows the Supreme Court's landmark June 30, 2026, decision in Trump v. Barbara, which affirmed 6-3 that children born on U.S. soil to undocumented or temporary resident parents are automatically citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause. In response to that defeat, President Trump signed a narrower executive order on August 6, directing federal agencies to deny citizenship documents to children born to parents who entered the country in a "commercial transaction" (targeting birth tourism) or whose parents are deemed "alien enemies."
Judge Boardman rejected the administration's attempts to bypass the Supreme Court's decision through newly defined categories, stating:
"Since his second term in office began on January 20, 2025, the President has tried, through Executive Order, to upend our country’s longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship and eliminate, for large swaths of Americans, the right to citizenship by birth, a right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."
She added:
"The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are 'citizens at birth'."
The preliminary injunction prevents the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and other agencies from enforcing the August order against members of the certified class of plaintiffs. The decision underscores the judiciary's role as a major check on the administration's aggressive use of unilateral executive orders to alter established constitutional rights.