Judge blocks Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions in third ruling
since high court decision
[July 26, 2025]
By MICHAEL CASEY
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration
from ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are
in the U.S. illegally, issuing the third court ruling blocking the
birthright order nationwide since a key Supreme Court decision in June.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, joining another district court as well
as an appellate panel of judges, found that a nationwide injunction
granted to more than a dozen states remains in force under an exception
to the Supreme Court ruling. That decision restricted the power of
lower-court judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
The states have argued Trump’s birthright citizenship order is blatantly
unconstitutional and threatens millions of dollars for health insurance
services that are contingent on citizenship status. The issue is
expected to move quickly back to the nation’s highest court.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement the
administration looked forward to "being vindicated on appeal.”
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who helped lead the lawsuit
before Sorokin, said in a statement he was “thrilled the district court
again barred President Trump’s flagrantly unconstitutional birthright
citizenship order from taking effect anywhere.”
"American-born babies are American, just as they have been at every
other time in our Nation’s history,” he added. "The President cannot
change that legal rule with the stroke of a pen.”
Lawyers for the government had argued Sorokin should narrow the reach of
his earlier ruling granting a preliminary injunction, saying it should
be “tailored to the States’ purported financial injuries.”
Sorokin said a patchwork approach to the birthright order would not
protect the states in part because a substantial number of people move
between states. He also blasted the Trump administration, saying it had
failed to explain how a narrower injunction would work.
“That is, they have never addressed what renders a proposal feasible or
workable, how the defendant agencies might implement it without imposing
material administrative or financial burdens on the plaintiffs, or how
it squares with other relevant federal statutes,” the judge wrote. “In
fact, they have characterized such questions as irrelevant to the task
the Court is now undertaking. The defendants’ position in this regard
defies both law and logic.”
Sorokin acknowledged his order would not be the last word on birthright
citizenship. Trump and his administration “are entitled to pursue their
interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and no doubt the Supreme
Court will ultimately settle the question,” Sorokin wrote. “But in the
meantime, for purposes of this lawsuit at this juncture, the Executive
Order is unconstitutional.”
The administration has not yet appealed any of the recent court rulings.
Trump’s efforts to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are
in the country illegally or temporarily will remain blocked unless and
until the Supreme Court says otherwise.
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Demonstrators holds up a banner during a citizenship rally outside
of the Supreme Court in Washington, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose
Luis Magana, File)
A federal judge in New Hampshire issued a ruling earlier this month
prohibiting Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide in
a new class-action lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante in
New Hampshire had paused his own decision to allow for the Trump
administration to appeal, but with no appeal filed, his order went
into effect.
On Wednesday, a San Francisco-based appeals court found the
president’s executive order unconstitutional and affirmed a lower
court’s nationwide block.
A Maryland-based judge said last week that she would do the same if
an appeals court signed off.
The justices ruled last month that lower courts generally can’t
issue nationwide injunctions, but it didn’t rule out other court
orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action
lawsuits and those brought by states. The Supreme Court did not
decide whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.
Plaintiffs in the Boston case earlier argued that the principle of
birthright citizenship is “enshrined in the Constitution,” and that
Trump does not have the authority to issue the order, which they
called a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands
of American-born children of their citizenship based on their
parentage.”
They also argue that Trump’s order halting automatic citizenship for
babies born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily would
cost states funding they rely on to “provide essential services” —
from foster care to health care for low-income children, to “early
interventions for infants, toddlers, and students with
disabilities.”
At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the
Constitution, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the
Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. That decision found that Scott,
an enslaved man, wasn’t a citizen despite having lived in a state
where slavery was outlawed.
The Trump administration has asserted that children of noncitizens
are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and
therefore not entitled to citizenship.
“These courts are misinterpreting the purpose and the text of the
14th Amendment,” Jackson, the White House spokeswoman, said in her
statement.
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Associated Press reporter Mark Sherman in Washington contributed.
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