A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s renewed attempts to restrict birthright citizenship, several weeks after the president signed orders targeting so-called “birth tourism” and imposing other restrictions in response to the Supreme Court striking down his more sweeping earlier order on the matter.

Maryland Federal Judge Deborah Boardman on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction against Trump’s executive orders, noting that the plaintiffs challenging the order are “likely to succeed on the merits of their constitutional claim.”

The ruling noted that the immigrant families represented by the class action suit would suffer “irreparable harm” without an injunction by having their citizenship denied while the government would not be harmed by it.

The injunction prevents the administration from enforcing its restrictions on birthright citizenship; however, federal agencies can continue to develop public guidance on how the president’s order will be implemented.

In an accompanying opinion , the Biden-appointed judge cited the Supreme Court’s June ruling against Trump’s broader effort to curb birthright citizenship and wrote the latest order could “deny the right to citizenship by birth” to children who the top court “declared were citizens.”

Boardman described the June ruling by the Supreme Court as the “law of the land” and added that the president “must follow it.”

“A month after Barbara [the Supreme Court Case] came down, the President continued his efforts to abolish birthright citizenship for many Americans…The 2026 Executive Order is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth,” the judge wrote in her opinion, which described birthright citizenship as a “longstanding tradition” and a “right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

What Do We Know About Trump’s Latest Orders?

Last month, President Donald Trump signed a narrowed-down executive order to restrict birthright citizenship for a specific group of people, specifically targeting so-called “birth tourism.” The order described birth tourism as someone who enters the U.S. “on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth within the Nation’s borders.” The order claimed that birth tourism allows “foreign nationals to exploit their temporary admission to obtain permanent immigration-related benefits.” A separate order signed on the same day moved to restrict birthright citizenship for children born to anyone considered an “alien enemy”—including a member of a designated foreign terrorist organization. The order also targeted children born to people working at foreign embassies, foreign government staff, and international organizations. While signing the orders, Trump described the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling on the matter as “unfortunate.”

In June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Trump’s earlier executive order restricting birthright citizenship for children born to parents who are in the country either unlawfully or temporarily. Trump signed the order shortly after entering office in 2025, but it was repeatedly blocked by courts. Plaintiffs challenging the order had argued that it violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” In the majority opinion, Roberts wrote that: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’”

Trump Can’t Restrict Birthright Citizenship, Supreme Court Rules (Forbes)