Judge Won't Yet Block Trump's New Birthright Citizenship Order, But Calls It "Unprecedented"

A federal judge in Maryland on Friday declined to immediately block President Trump's second attempt in 19 months to narrow birthright citizenship, even as she questioned the legal basis for the new order from the bench. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, sitting in Greenbelt, said she could not grant a temporary restraining order because the lawsuit before her had not yet been amended to address the order Mr. Trump signed on Aug. 6, but she set an accelerated schedule for the advocacy groups suing him to fix that.

A judge questions the order, but can't yet stop it

The order at issue, "Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," denies citizenship recognition to children born on U.S. soil, when neither parent is a citizen, in four circumstances: if a parent is an "alien enemy" or member of a designated foreign terrorist organization; if a parent works for a foreign government or international organization; if the birth resulted from a paid "commercial transaction," including so-called birth tourism or surrogacy arrangements; or if the birth occurred in a U.S. territory, such as American Samoa, where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute.

Judge Boardman did not hide her skepticism. "As far as I can tell, this is unprecedented," she said from the bench. She pressed government lawyers on where in the Supreme Court's own ruling two months earlier they found room for a birth-tourism carve-out, and said the new order "tries to strike out exceptions to birthright citizenship with the stroke of a pen." Even so, she ruled that the case in front of her, filed in January 2025, did not mention the August order and so could not be used to block it. She invited the plaintiffs to supplement their complaint and put the case on an expedited track.

The numbers

The dispute traces back to a Supreme Court decision handed down 59 days earlier. In Trump v. Barbara, decided 6-3 on June 30, the justices struck down Mr. Trump's original January 2025 order and held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion.

Federal data cited by researchers who track the issue put the scale of what the new order targets in perspective: fewer than 10,000 babies were born in the United States in 2024 to mothers who listed a foreign address, according to CDC figures cited in early coverage of the order, out of roughly 3.6 million births nationwide that year — a small fraction of overall births, though estimates of "birth tourism" specifically vary widely, from a few thousand to tens of thousands annually, depending on methodology. The Aug. 6 order gives federal agencies 30 days to issue implementation guidance, a deadline that falls on Sept. 5.

How the fight over the amendment escalated

The case Judge Boardman is overseeing, CASA Inc. v. Trump, has been in her Greenbelt courtroom since the order Mr. Trump issued at the start of his second term took effect in January 2025; she blocked it almost immediately. After the Supreme Court affirmed birthright citizenship as a constitutional guarantee in June, Judge Boardman certified a nationwide class of affected children on Aug. 7 and formally reinstated an injunction against that original order — one of at least four district and appellate rulings nationwide to block it since the Court's decision came down.

Mr. Trump signed the new order the day before that injunction, on Aug. 6, alongside a companion order directing the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to restrict visas for suspected birth-tourism travelers. Rather than repeat the blanket denial the court had just rejected, the new order tries a narrower approach, carving out specific categories the administration argues fall outside the Fourteenth Amendment's protection. Immigrant-rights groups We Are CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project sued days later, on Aug. 11, arguing the carve-outs are just as unconstitutional as the order the Supreme Court already struck down.

Who it affects, and what comes next

The immediate effect of Friday's ruling is that the Aug. 6 order remains formally in place while the case proceeds, though the Justice Department told the court it has not yet issued the implementation guidance needed to act on it. That leaves in legal limbo, at least for now, an uncertain number of families who fall into the order's targeted categories — foreign diplomatic staff, people the government designates as tied to terrorist organizations, and parents the government believes traveled to the U.S. specifically to give birth. Immigration lawyers say the categories are broad enough that documentation disputes alone, over a parent's visa status or the purpose of a trip, could delay a passport or a Social Security number for an American-born child.

The White House has defended the order as closing what it calls exploitation of the citizenship system. In an accompanying fact sheet, the administration described citizenship as "a priceless and profound gift" and said the order "upholds the integrity of the Nation's immigration system by denying the entry of birth tourists." White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said the order "ends what has been one of the gravest and most egregious abuses of the American system, and it keeps American citizenship sacred," while staff secretary Will Scharf argued the administration was using "legally validated means" that do not conflict with the Supreme Court's opinion.

Civil rights lawyers reject that framing. ACLU deputy director Cody Wofsy said the group intends to challenge the order the same way it fought the first one.

"No additional executive order can change the meaning of the Constitution. Any executive order that tries to rewrite birthright citizenship will meet the same fate as the last one," Wofsy said.

Cato Institute immigration analyst David Bier went further, calling the order's categories a way of "blatantly ignoring the Supreme Court's decision" and predicting swift court intervention once the case is properly before a judge.

That test now moves onto Judge Boardman's expedited schedule. Plaintiffs are expected to file an amended complaint targeting the August order directly, with briefing to follow on an accelerated timeline. The Justice Department has signaled it will keep pressing the argument that no court can act until the government finishes writing the guidance due by Sept. 5 — guidance immigrant-rights lawyers say they intend to challenge the moment it appears. Judge Boardman gave no indication of how she would rule once the order is squarely before her, but her comments from the bench suggested she was not persuaded by the government's distinctions.