A federal judge on Friday declined to immediately block US President Donald Trump’s newest executive order limiting the number of people eligible for birthright citizenship, even as she sharply questioned its viability after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his previous effort to do so.
Boardman, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, said because the plaintiffs’ lawsuit did not even mention Trump’s 2026 order, she was unable to block it from being implemented at this time.
US District Judge Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland, rejected a request for a temporary restraining order sought by immigrant rights advocates who had last year secured a ruling from her blocking the Trump administration from enforcing his initial 2025 executive order curtailing birthright citizenship. The US Supreme Court on June 30 rejected Trump’s initial effort to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents were not American citizens or legal permanent residents, known as green card holders, finding it violated the citizenship clause of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Following that decision, Trump signed a new order on August 6 that took particular aim at “birth tourism,” in which women travel to the United States to give birth so their children can obtain automatic citizenship. Citizenship would also be denied to children whose parents work for foreign governments in the United States, engage in fraud to obtain citizenship, or are classified as “alien enemies.”
