Federal Court Issues First Ruling Against Trump's New Birthright Citizenship Executive Order
The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
About The Volokh Conspiracy Editorial Independence Who we are Books Volokh Daily Email Archives Search DMCA RSS
Donald Trump
Federal Court Issues First Ruling Against Trump's New Birthright Citizenship Executive Order
The court rightly concluded that the order is barred by the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Barbara.
Ilya Somin | 9.2.2026 11:24 PM
Milla74/Dreamstime
Last month, I wrote about Trump's new executive order seeking to deny birthright citizenship to various classes of children born on US soil, and noted the first legal challenges to it. As I pointed out then, almost every part of the new order is at odds with the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Trump v. Barbara, which struck down Trump's executive order denying birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States, and those born to non-citizen parents here on temporary visas. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees grants citizenship to all children "born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." In Barbara, the Supreme Court majority made clear that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" includes children of all persons who are subject to and required to obey US law.
Today, in Casa, Inc. v. Trump, federal district court Judge Deborah Boardman of the District of Maryland issued a decision imposing a preliminary injunction blocking the new order. It is the first judicial ruling on Trump's new birthright citizenship executive order. As Judge Boardman put it, "[t]he 2026 Executive Order is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the........
