This is the fourth ruling halting the order since June
Maryland-based US district judge Deborah Boardman has shot down the US President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order nationwide, reported the Associated Press.
Boardman issued a preliminary injunction last Thursday indicating that the US administration could not deny citizenship to children whose parents were in the country either illegally or temporarily. The plaintiffs’ argument that the order breached the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment was likely to win in court, she indicated in her ruling.
The 14th Amendment contains a clause that grants citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the country and subject to US jurisdiction.Boardman’s decision certified a class of children born or would be born in the US after February 19, 2025. Trump’s order, which came into effect in January, would have impacted their citizenship status.
Boardman also wrote in her decision that the plaintiffs were likely to experience irreparable harm if the order was implemented, per AP News. The judge had previously said that she would take this step should an appeals court send the case back to her – which the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals did in July.
Boardman is the fourth to make this call on the birthright citizenship order since June, when the US Supreme Court decided that federal judges are not authorized to grant nationwide injunctions. Boardman had already issued a preliminary injunction against the order in February.
Two district courts and an appellate panel of judges have blocked the order as well; the Supreme Court decision didn’t cover court orders that could have nationwide impacts such as those issued in relation to class actions and suits filed by states. In July, a three-judge panel in the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the birthright citizenship unconstitutional. New Hampshire federal judge Joseph LaPlante also issued a preliminary injunction against the order and certified a class action that included all affected children.
