U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing a new executive order that limits who qualifies for birthright citizenship — the second such order President Donald Trump signed after the Supreme Court rejected his first try, according to Reuters.

Trump signed the latest directive on Aug. 6, after the justices on June 30 struck down his 2025 executive order in Trump v. Barbara, a 6-3 ruling that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment protects children born in the United States who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," including those whose parents are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. The newer order aimed especially at "birth tourism" and also sought to deny citizenship where a parent works for a foreign government in the United States, engages in fraud or a commercial transaction to obtain citizenship, or is classified as an "alien enemy," Reuters reported.

Immigrant-rights groups CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project — plaintiffs in a class action Boardman had already used to block the 2025 order — asked her to stop enforcement of the Aug. 6 directive and keep class members' citizenship recognized. Boardman agreed. The latest order "is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth," she wrote, according to Reuters. "This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President's most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them."

Her injunction bars the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration from taking any action to interfere with, deny, or fail to recognize citizenship for people covered by the class. Justice Department lawyers had argued the new order was narrower than the first and that any challenge should wait until agencies issue public implementation guidance — expected by Saturday, Sept. 5. Reuters reported Tuesday that the State Department had drafted proposed guidance that would require parents applying for children's passports to prove their own citizenship or immigration status. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Boardman, a Biden appointee, had declined an immediate temporary restraining order at a hearing last Friday while allowing the plaintiffs to revise their complaint so she could consider what she called an "unprecedented" order, The Globe and Mail (Reuters) noted. Wednesday's injunction is the follow-through: the Constitution's text — not an executive pen — sets the floor for birthright citizenship, and a president who loses at the Supreme Court does not get a do-over by rewriting the class of citizens out of existence. Whether the administration tries another appellate path, Congress rewrites statute, or the agencies sit under the injunction, the constraint on executive power is the story the court just reaffirmed.

Sources