The decision follows the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision that President Trump’s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship were illegal.
Published September 3, 2026
A federal judge in Maryland has blocked President Donald Trump’s latest effort to strip him of his birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court ruled the president’s last-ditch effort was unconstitutional.
District Judge Deborah Boardman on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction against President Trump’s new executive order issued on August 6th.
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The new executive order targets what President Trump calls “birth tourism,” or the intentional birthing of children on foreign soil.
The law called for denying citizenship to certain groups of foreign children, including those accused of engaging in commercial transactions to obtain citizenship or classified as “enemies of foreigners.”
But Boardman said the order is unconstitutional for the same reasons Trump’s previous efforts have failed. She cited the Supreme Court’s June decision in Barbara v. Trump.
“This order as applied to the certified class is almost certainly unconstitutional for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara has already ruled that children in that class are citizens at birth,” she wrote.
“This court must once again pre-empt the President’s latest attempt to strip them of their citizenship.”
In Barbara, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that birthright citizenship is protected under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Birthright citizenship automatically grants citizenship to everyone born in the United States, with a few exceptions, such as children of diplomats and invading troops.
The constitutional basis for birthright citizenship has been upheld in several Supreme Court cases over the years, most notably United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an American man born to Chinese parents.
But Trump campaigned for a second term as president on a promise to crack down on immigration into the country.
One of his promises was to reform the concept of birthright citizenship. Mr. Trump and his allies argue that children of temporary and undocumented immigrants are not entitled to such rights because they are not under U.S. “jurisdiction.”
Since his Supreme Court loss in June, Trump and his allies have continued to find ways to challenge the Constitution’s protections for birthright citizenship.
Wednesday’s legal challenge was filed by immigrant rights advocates and their families, including groups such as the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.
They had won an injunction from Boardman last year, blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its first executive order on birthright citizenship.
Boardman last week directed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint to specifically address the second executive order, rather than relying on the same materials used in the first.
However, she expressed skepticism at the time about the constitutionality of President Trump’s attempt, calling it “unprecedented.”
“The Supreme Court has stated that children in the recognized class are ‘citizens by birth,'” she wrote in Wednesday’s decision.
