Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Order on Birthright Citizenship

A federal judge has once again stepped in to block former U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship, granting a fresh legal reprieve to those challenging the controversial policy.

The latest ruling comes as opponents of the order explore a new legal route, following a recent Supreme Court decision that restricted the ability of individual judges to issue nationwide injunctions against presidential directives.

Trump’s executive order seeks to deny automatic U.S. citizenship to children born on American soil to parents who are either undocumented immigrants or in the country on temporary visas—a move that challenges the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Though the Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s order in its June decision, it allowed the order to move forward but left room for class-action lawsuits to challenge it.

Acting swiftly, Trump’s opponents filed such lawsuits, leading to Thursday’s ruling by Judge Joseph Laplante of the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire, who granted class-action status to affected children and issued a preliminary injunction against the executive order.

“The issue of citizenship touches the heart of the Constitution,” Judge Laplante noted in court documents, ordering the halt while legal proceedings continue. The injunction was delayed for seven days to allow the Trump administration time to appeal.

Cody Wofsy, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who argued the case, hailed the decision as a major win.

“This is a huge victory that will help protect the citizenship of all children born in the United States, as the Constitution intended,” Wofsy said.

Trump’s administration has long contended that the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, was designed to secure the rights of formerly enslaved people—not the children of undocumented migrants or temporary foreign nationals.

However, that interpretation had previously been rejected in a landmark 1898 Supreme Court ruling, which affirmed that birth on U.S. soil grants citizenship regardless of the parents’ immigration status.

Although the current 6-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court has shown some openness to revisiting long-established interpretations, lower courts have repeatedly ruled that Trump’s executive order violates the Constitution.

As the legal battle continues, the status of birthright citizenship remains at the center of a fierce political and judicial struggle in the United States.