The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's order blocking President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship order from going into effect nationwide, despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court striking down another nationwide ruling. (Photo by Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  A federal appeals court dealt a setback for President Donald Trump’s offensive to end birthright citizenship, even after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the lower courts to avoid overly broad immigration rulings. The decision likely sets the stage for the high court to again hear arguments related to the constitutional right for babies born on U.S. soil.

Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a 2-1 decision late Wednesday declaring Trump’s policy unconstitutional. The ruling upheld a lower court’s nationwide injunction against the controversial order.

The original complaint was brought by Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon over the economic hardship states would bear if birthright citizenship was stripped from the Constitution.

Writing the majority opinion, Judge Ronald M. Gould affirmed the district court rightly made its ruling nationwide, despite the recent Supreme Court decision.

“The district court below concluded that a universal preliminary injunction is necessary to provide the States with complete relief,” Gould wrote. “We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief.”

An injunction covering only the states that challenged the order would be impractical because migrants covered by the order would inevitably move between states, Gould, who was appointed by Democratic former President Bill Clinton, continued, explaining that states would then need to overhaul verification for numerous social safety net programs.

“For that reason, the States would suffer the same irreparable harms under a geographically-limited injunction as they would without an injunction,” he wrote.

Judge Michael D. Hawkins, also a Clinton appointee, joined the majority opinion.

In a dissent, Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, appointed to the bench by Trump in 2019, wrote that courts must be “vigilant in enforcing the limits of our jurisdiction and our power to order relief. Otherwise, we risk entangling ourselves in contentious issues not properly before us and overstepping our bounds.”

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond for comment.

Supreme Court ruling

The decision comes less than two weeks after a district judge in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s policy to end birthright citizenship and granted a class certification to infants who would be affected by the order.

The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of immigrants whose babies would be affected by the order shortly after the Supreme Court narrowed lower courts’ abilities to impose nationwide orders.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued the 6-3 decision on June 27 after the justices reviewed three cases consolidated into one that brought together plaintiffs from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia and the county and city of San Francisco also joined.

The justices ruled that Trump’s directive to end birthright citizenship can go into effect within 30 days of their ruling in all non-plaintiff states.

Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, joined demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, May 15, 2025, to protest the Trump administration's effort to strip birthright citizenship from the Constitution. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New Hampshire Thursday issued a preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order that would rewrite the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, and granted a class certification to infants who would be affected by the order.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante came after the Supreme Court last month limited lower courts’ ability to grant nationwide injunctions. Multiple courts had blocked the president’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, which is granted under the 14th Amendment to any infant born on U.S. soil. There is an exception for children born to foreign diplomats. 

Laplante will stay his ruling for seven days to give the Trump administration time to appeal, according to his written order. Laplante was nominated by former President George W. Bush.

The high court in June deemed that lower courts should seek a narrower way to issue orders with wide effect, such as a class action suit. Under the ruling, the Trump administration’s executive order could take effect by July 27 in the 28 states that did not initially sue.

After the Supreme Court ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on behalf of immigrants whose babies would be affected by the order.

However, Laplante narrowed his injunction to focus on the infants as the plaintiffs rather than the parents.

“This ruling is a huge victory and will help protect the citizenship of all children born in the United States, as the Constitution intended,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who argued the case. “We are fighting to ensure President Trump doesn’t trample on the citizenship rights of one single child.” 

A child celebrates Independence Day | Getty Images Creative

Your citizenship, like mine, is an accident of birth. 

You were born here. So was I. The rub is I was born to immigrants who were not yet legal residents.

That makes me a birthright citizen under the 14th Amendment. That also allegedly makes me an “anchor baby.” I’m referring to the assertion that immigrants have come to the U.S. and have  babies only so they can gain  legal residency later.

Real life is more complicated than that for millions of immigrants who come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons — whether they are fleeing violence in their home countries or simply seeking a better life, as generations in our nation of immigrants have done. 

Does the immigration status of my parents really matter? How long ago  did your immigrant ancestors first step foot here? How many generations does it take for citizenship to be “deserved?”

The Constitution’s 14th Amendment says unequivocally that I’m as deserving as the accident of your birth makes you. If you are born here, you’re a U.S. citizen. Me, too. That’s birthright citizenship.

On Jan. 20, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending automatic citizenship for babies born to parents who don’t have lawful status in the U.S.  

In a recent 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court did not address  the constitutionality of Trump’s order. Instead, it ruled that lower courts have no power to issue nationwide injunctions,  voiding  district courts’  rulings that Trump may not deport people who have been U.S. citizens all their lives.  

After the ruling, some groups began the slow process to challenge the law in a nationwide class action lawsuit. But until the Court decides otherwise, the fundamental question whether someone is considered a U.S. citizen will have different answers in different states. 

Meanwhile, raids on immigrant communities continue.

The Trump administration is clearly emboldened. The Supreme Court’s ruling allows the ban on birthright citizenship to take effect in those 28 states that didn’t challenge the president’s initial executive order. And the administration is counting on the high court to see it his way on the constitutional question eventually.

At this point, I lack the confidence to say it won’t.

I understand the argument that  children born to U.S. citizens are more deserving than I am. “But my ancestors emigrated here legally,” say more “deserving” citizens. Never mind that the barriers to coming to this country legally have moved up and down. Today, even people with demonstrable asylum claims are being shut out.

Back in the day, if you showed up to these shores, you simply got in. It wasn’t until 1924 that the U.S. started enforcing quotas for national origin. Aside from immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (deemed then as too foreign, i.e. not white enough), these quotas favored other white immigrants. And it specifically targeted Asians for exclusion.

This preference for white immigrants continues. White immigrants from, say, Canada and Ireland, don’t seem to be affected by this attempted purge.

So let’s be honest. Many of your immigrant ancestors were legal simply by default.

Other people will argue that ICE is targeting immigrants  who have committed violent crimes. A couple of big problems: according to the libertarian CATO Institute, 65% of those taken by ICE have no criminal record and 93% have not committed a violent crime. 

As a group, immigrants are a safer group than U.S.-born citizens. They commit fewer crimes.

The issue is not criminality. It’s race. All across the country,  Latinos are being detained because of the color of their skin.

Some folks insist that the 14th Amendment dealt only with the children of slaves freed after the Civil War. 

Here’s what the amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof (my emphasis), are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

Clearly, even those here without documents are subject to U.S. and state laws. That puts them under U.S. jurisdiction. The courts have confirmed birthright citizenship as early as the late 19th Century (United States v. Wong Kim Ark.).

Is military service an indication of deserving citizenship?

Immigrants and their children are populations the military covets for recruitment. About 5% of active-duty personnel are children of immigrants and 12%  of living veterans are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Meanwhile, there is a shrinking pool of Americans able to serve, owing to their own criminality, fitness and, importantly, willingness.

So, maybe this ire for birthright citizens like me is about how much of a drain we are on government services and the economy.

But, bucking a trend for other Americans, the children of immigrants often surpass the economic success of their parents. That’s been true in my family and virtually everyone else with my background I’ve encountered.

So, who deserves to be a citizen?

I contend that a chief quality of those who  deserve citizenship is that they don’t take their citizenship for granted. They know their parents sacrificed much to make it happen. We are proud Americans. We belong here. And we deserve to stay.

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The U.S. Supreme Court, as seen on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday in a major decision reined in nationwide injunctions by some lower courts that had blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order barring birthright citizenship.

The high court declined to decide the constitutionality of birthright citizenship itself. But the justices said the Trump executive order rewriting the constitutional right to birthright citizenship could go into effect within 30 days after Friday’s ruling in the 28 states that did not initially sue.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision thus raises the prospect that a child born in some states would be regarded legally as a U.S. citizen but not in others until the overall question of constitutionality is settled, unless there is further legal action.

The sweeping ruling also likely could hamper other legal challenges against Trump administration actions in which nationwide injunctions are sought. Democratic attorneys general in the states have been successful in obtaining injunctions in the months since Trump was elected.

“GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!” Trump wrote on social media shortly after the ruling.

Speaking at the White House later, Trump said his administration will move forward with several executive orders that have faced nationwide injunctions, such as suspending refugee resettlement and revoking federal funds from “sanctuary” states and localities.

“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including birthright citizenship,” Trump said.

Liberals on the high court issued a strong dissent. “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

Joining the dissent were Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Barrett writes ruling

In the ruling, the conservative justices found that nationwide “injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”

“The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue,” according to the ruling, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

While the dispute before the court related to Trump’s executive order to rewrite the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the Trump administration asked the high court to instead focus on the issue of preliminary injunctions granted by lower courts.

“The applications do not raise—and thus the Court does not address—the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,” according to the ruling, referring to the practice of granting citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who appeared at the White House with the president, predicted the Supreme Court in its new term in October will take up the merits of the executive order that aims to redefine birthright citizenship.

The high court’s ruling instructs lower courts to “move expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity.”

In the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, through April 29, judges issued about 25 nationwide injunctions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“The lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate; we therefore leave it to them to consider these and any related arguments,” according to the ruling.

A narrower injunction could refer to a class action suit.

Barrett argued that a nationwide injunction would not grant more relief for barring the enforcement of Trump’s executive order against a pregnant person who is not a U.S. citizen and fears their child would be denied citizenship.

“Her child will not be denied citizenship. And extending the injunction to cover everyone similarly situated would not render her relief any more complete,” according to the ruling. “So the individual and associational respondents are wrong to characterize the universal injunction as simply an application of the complete-relief principle.”

Stateless people

Trump ran on a reelection campaign platform promising mass deportations of people without permanent legal status and vowed to end the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.

During the press conference at the White House Trump said that birthright citizenship historically was only meant to benefit the children of the newly freed African Americans, not the children of immigrants.

“It wasn’t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on vacation,” Trump said.

Under birthright citizenship, all children born in the United States are considered citizens, regardless of their parents’ legal status.

If birthright citizenship were to be eliminated, more than 250,000 children born each year would not be granted U.S. citizenship, according to a recent study by the think tank the Migration Policy Institute.

It would effectively create a class of 2.7 million stateless people by 2045, according to the study.

In last month’s oral arguments, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, contended that it’s unconstitutional for federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Instead, he said, the injunctions should be limited to those who brought the challenges.

‘Consequences for the children’

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said during a briefing with reporters that one group of private individuals that challenged the executive order has already filed a class action suit.

“I suspect more will come,” Platkin said.

Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown said at the press conference of Democratic attorneys general that because of Friday’s ruling, the rights of future newborns who hail from states that have not directly challenged the order will be in question.

“In Washington and New Jersey and Massachusetts, Connecticut, your rights are much more strong, but in all those other states, including many of our neighbor states, not participating in this case is going to have consequences for the children born in those states,” Brown said.

With 22 states part of the initial suits challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship order included, that means the order could impact the 28 states that were not part of the initial suit.

Those 28 states are: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

‘The gamesmanship in this request is apparent’

Sotomayor, in her dissent, argued that the Trump administration brought the question of nationwide injunctions before the high court because it would be “an impossible task” to prove the constitutionality of the birthright citizenship executive order.

“So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,” she said. “Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.”

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along,” she continued.

Sotomayor also questioned the irreparable harm the Trump administration would face.

“Simply put, it strains credulity to treat the Executive Branch as irreparably harmed by injunctions that direct it to continue following settled law,” she said.

She argued that the issue of birthright citizenship was ratified in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1868, following the Civil War, to establish citizenship for newly freed Black people. It was meant to rectify a 1857 case in Dred Scott v. Sandford where the Supreme Court initially denied citizenship to Black people, whether they were free or enslaved.

“By stripping all federal courts, including itself, of that power, the Court kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies,” Sotomayor said. “That runs directly counter to the point of equity: empowering courts to do complete justice, including through flexible remedies that have historically benefited parties and nonparties alike.”

Origins of birthright citizenship case

The case, Trump v. CASA, was consolidated from three cases.

George Escobar, the chief of programs and services of CASA, which brought the case, said in a statement that the ruling from the high court “undermines the fundamental promise of the Constitution — that every child born on U.S. soil is equal under the law.”

“Today’s decision sends a message to U.S.-born children of immigrants that their place in this country is conditional,” Escobar said. “But we are not backing down.”

The CASA case was on behalf of several pregnant women in Maryland who are not U.S. citizens who filed their case in Maryland; the second came from four states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon — that filed a case in Washington state; and the third came from 18 Democratic state attorneys general who filed the challenge in Massachusetts.

Those 18 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia and the county and city of San Francisco also joined.

This is not the first time the Supreme Court has addressed the issue of birthright citizenship.

In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the 14th Amendment, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, extending birthright citizenship.

In that 19th-century case, Ark was born in San Francisco, California, to parents who were citizens of the Republic of China, but had legal authority to be in the United States, such as a temporary visa. While Ark was born in California, his citizenship was not recognized when he went on a trip to China. Upon his return to California, he was denied reentry due to the Chinese Exclusion Act— a racist law designed to restrict and limit nearly all immigration of Chinese nationals.

When his case went all the way to the Supreme Court, the high court ruled that children born in the U.S. to parents who were not citizens automatically become citizens at birth.

The Trump administration has argued that the 1898 case was misinterpreted and point to a specific phrase: “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

Government attorneys contend that the phrase in the 14th Amendment means that birthright citizenship does not apply to people in the U.S. without legal status or temporary legal status who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of their country of origin.