Well, chalk one up for the radical notion that the executive branch has to follow the law. A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from enforcing its 2026 birthright-citizenship order against members of a certified class of children. The court found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their Fourteenth Amendment claim and said the order could not be used to deny citizenship to children the Supreme Court had already held were citizens at birth. Read Judge Deborah L. Boardman’s September 2 order.
The practical point is not subtle enough to need a CB-radio decoder ring: agencies may not use a newly narrowed executive order to get around a binding ruling on who is a citizen. The injunction is classwide, applies to the defendant agencies and officials, and bars them from interfering with, denying, or failing to recognize the citizenship of covered class members. The judge did not enjoin the president personally, because courts enjoy having jurisdiction more than they enjoy performative food fights. The order spells out the scope of the relief.
Associated Press reported that the administration’s latest order was framed as a move against so-called “birth tourism,” while immigrant families and advocacy groups argued it could reach far beyond that label. The administration said implementation guidance had not yet been issued; the court concluded that did not make the challenge premature. Translation from the bar stool: you do not get to wave around an order commanding agencies to deny citizenship, then insist nobody should worry until the instruction manual arrives with the onion rings. AP’s original reporting.
Sources
- https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.574698/gov.uscourts.mdd.574698.181.0.pdf
- https://apnews.com/article/birthright-citizenship-immigration-trump-blocked-69de0a404602a6e648b35f6a852c833d
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Featured image: US District Court Maryland Southern Division Greenbelt.jpg by Work of the United States Federal Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
