Federal Judge Blocks Trump's Birthright Citizenship Order, Saying it 'Conflicts With the Plain Language of the 14th Amendment'

The nationwide preliminary injunction from US District Judge Deborah Boardman is a significant ruling against Trump’s Day 1 order, which was swiftly met with legal challenges and put on hold days later by a separate judge. The order “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year old binding Supreme Court precedent and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth,” Boardman said during a hearing on Wednesday. “No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” she said. “This court will not be the first.”

A second federal judge has issued an order blocking Donald Trump's administration from implementing his plan to curtail U.S. birthright citizenship, saying no court in the United States has ever endorsed the Republican president's interpretation of the Constitution. During a hearing on Wednesday in Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman sided with two immigrant rights groups and five pregnant women who argued that their children were at risk of being denied U.S. citizenship based on the immigration status of their parents in violation of the Constitution. Boardman, an appointee of Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking Trump's order from going into effect as planned on Feb. 19 while the matter is litigated.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, noted a prior ruling that had paused the implementation of Trump's order. Boardman argued that citizenship is a "national concern that demands a uniform policy." The prior ruling only paused implementation of Trump's order for 14 days, however, while Boardman's ruling will last through appeal. "Citizenship is a most precious right, expressly granted by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution," she wrote in her ruling. The decision comes more than a week after U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, also blocked the executive order following a lawsuit by four U.S. states — Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. Coughenour called Trump's order "blatantly unconstitutional."