Judge Blocks Trump's 2026 Birthright Citizenship Order

A U.S. District judge has blocked President Donald Trump's August 6, 2026 executive order that aimed to restrict birthright citizenship. Judge Deborah Boardman issued the preliminary injunction on September 2, 2026, protecting a certified class of children represented by immigrant-rights groups CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.

Judge Boardman rejected the Justice Department's argument that the lawsuit was premature. Federal agencies had not yet issued public guidance on implementing the order. The judge instead relied on a Supreme Court ruling from June 30, 2026, which found a similar 2025 effort by Trump violated the 14th Amendment. She stated the high court had already determined the status of the children in the case.

"The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are 'citizens at birth,'" Boardman wrote, according to the source report from VisaVerge. She described the new policy as "almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class."

The revised order's expanded scope

Trump signed the new directive after the Supreme Court rejected his initial 2025 order. The August 2026 order focuses on "birth tourism," where people travel to the U.S. To give birth so their children receive automatic citizenship. Its provisions also address several other categories.

The order seeks to deny citizenship to children whose parent works for a foreign government in the United States, is classified as an "alien enemy," or allegedly used fraud or a commercial transaction to obtain citizenship for a child. The directive would also affect children connected to commercial arrangements involving citizenship.

Rejection of the timing argument

Justice Department attorneys told the court that agencies needed time to prepare implementation guidance, pointing to September 5, 2026, as the expected date for its release. Judge Boardman did not accept this schedule as a reason to postpone intervention. At a hearing, she called the directive "unprecedented" before entering the injunction.

Her ruling addressed the administration's position that no immediate dispute existed before agencies published instructions. Boardman stated the executive order itself commands agencies to deny citizenship documents to broad groups of children.

"No matter what the guidance says, the 2026 Executive Order commands agencies to deny citizenship documents to several broad categories of children," she wrote. This reasoning allowed the case to proceed before the expected guidance date.

Coverage of the Maryland class

The case, Casa Inc. V. Trump, is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Greenbelt. The injunction bars enforcement against the protected children by the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration.

One reporting summary described the protected group as children born after February 19, 2025, to one or more parents who were not lawfully in the country at the time. The order also protects babies represented by the two immigrant-rights organizations named in the lawsuit.

Judge Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, had previously blocked Trump's initial 2025 order before the Supreme Court considered that effort. The high court's June ruling supplied the precedent she cited in the new injunction. The earlier decision held that the citizenship clause applies to qualifying children born in the United States.

"This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President's most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them," Boardman wrote. The injunction remains tied to the ongoing litigation rather than ending the case. The Justice Department's expected September 5 guidance will now be issued while the injunction is in effect.