A U.S. federal judge on Friday declined to issue an immediate temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump’s second executive order limiting birthright citizenship, marking an early legal test of the narrowed policy.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, appointed by former President Joe Biden, refused the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction for now. She directed a coalition of immigrant families and advocacy groups to amend their existing lawsuit to specifically challenge the August 6 order. Boardman said she would schedule further briefing once a revised complaint is filed, leaving open the possibility of reconsidering injunctive relief.
“As far as I can tell, this is unprecedented,” Boardman said of the new order, while expressing concern about it.
The ruling does not resolve the legality of the measure. It simply requires the plaintiffs, including groups such as We Are CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project to update their case to address the revised policy directly rather than relying solely on challenges to Trump’s earlier order.
Trump signed his first birthright citizenship executive order on January 20, 2025, his first day back in office. That directive instructed federal agencies not to recognize citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who were either unlawfully present or lawfully but temporarily in the country. Courts blocked the order, and the Supreme Court ruled against it in a 6-3 decision on June 30.
The August 6 order is more narrowly drawn. It seeks to deny citizenship to children born to non-citizen parents deemed “alien enemies” or “terrorists,” those whose parents allegedly engage in commercial transactions to obtain citizenship, or cases involving birth tourism arrangements. It also excludes children born in certain U.S. territories, such as American Samoa, where citizenship is not automatically conferred by federal statute.
Trump has defended the policy as necessary to counter “malign foreign actors” and so-called birth tourism. Critics, including the plaintiffs, argue that the president lacks authority to alter the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship by executive order.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The Supreme Court affirmed a broad reading of the provision in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, holding that a U.S.-born child of Chinese immigrant parents was a citizen. Limited exceptions have traditionally applied to children of foreign diplomats and certain occupying forces.
In an August 24 filing, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the core constitutional question remains unchanged regardless of how many executive orders are issued: “It is simply not up to the Executive Branch to decide who is a citizen by birth in the United States.”
Boardman had previously granted preliminary injunctions against the 2025 order. Friday’s decision keeps the litigation alive and sets the stage for further court proceedings on the scope of presidential power and the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause.
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