Fed Judge Blocks Trump's Birthright Citizenship Order After SCOTUS Decision
A New Hampshire-based federal district court judge blocked on Thursday President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order from taking effect, using an exception to last month’s Supreme Court ruling for the administration.
In a 6-3 decision on Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court voted to narrow nationwide injunctions that had previously hampered Trump on a number of issues, including birthright citizenship.
However, in their opinion, the justices said that a remedy that plaintiffs may still seek on a nationwide basis is the class-action lawsuit.
Judge Joseph Laplante, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled Thursday that the plaintiffs have satisfied the requirements to make them part of a class.
Judge Joseph Laplante has BLOCKED President Trump’s Executive Order to end birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court already ruled against nationwide injuctions.
No one elected judges to make nationwide policy. This needs to end. pic.twitter.com/RMAFf7wnpk
— Rep. Mike Collins (@RepMikeCollins) July 10, 2025
The Hill reported that the executive order, which Trump issued the day he took office in January, was set to go into effect on July 27 following the Supreme Court’s ruling in CASA.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit on behalf of a pregnant woman, two parents, and their infants soon after the high court’s decision.
Under Trump’s executive order, children born in the U.S. are only citizens if at least one of their parents is an American citizen or has permanent legal status, i.e., they hold a green card. That would mean children of illegal immigrants are not U.S. citizens.
The president pointed to the language in the 14th Amendment, adopted shortly after the Civil War in 1868, which states, “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.”
“That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race,” Trump’s executive order said.
Those who advocate that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically an American citizen point to the first clause of the 14th Amendment to make their case, while Trump’s Department of Justice says the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is pivotal.
Illegal aliens are, by definition, citizens of other countries and therefore not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, the DOJ argues.
🧵1. @MeetThePress omits six words about birthright citizenship from the 14th Amendment
The omitted text is set off by asterisks:
“All persons born … in the United States, *and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,* shall be citizens of the United States”
Those words matter https://t.co/qVYld0O4og
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) December 8, 2024
The Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue, including last month, when the justices only addressed the issue of nationwide injunctions.
The closest they have come to such a ruling was in 1895, when the Court held that children born to legal resident aliens are American citizens.
The question of whether to issue an injunction was “not a close call,” LaPlante said, noting children could be deprived of U.S. citizenship if Trump’s order took effect, according to The Hill.
The judge has given Trump seven days to appeal his ruling. It will go to the liberal First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, though the administration could try to make an emergency appeal directly to the Supreme Court.
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