BALTIMORE — U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing an Aug. 6 executive order that sought to deny automatic citizenship to children of "alien enemies," foreign government employees and people accused of "birth tourism," ruling that the measure "is almost certainly unconstitutional" under the 14th Amendment.

The 35-page order marks the second time in three months that a federal court has halted President Trump's push to narrow the Citizenship Clause. The Supreme Court in June struck down a broader January 2025 order, and Boardman's ruling in favor of Maryland-based nonprofit CASA Inc. leaves the White House's August rewrite unenforceable while the case proceeds.

What the order did

The Aug. 6 measure carved three exceptions to birthright citizenship. It denied citizenship to children whose parents the administration has designated "alien enemies" — a category it has extended beyond wartime combatants to alleged members of foreign drug cartels — and to children of foreign embassy workers. It also targeted "birth tourism," defined in the order as travel to the United States as part of a "commercial transaction" tied to giving birth.

CASA and its co-plaintiffs argued that historically accepted carve-outs from the 14th Amendment are narrow and that the executive order was unconstitutionally "attempting to expand those categories." Their lawyers wrote that some plaintiffs feared "that by buying a plane ticket to travel to the United States, they may run afoul" of the birth-tourism provision.

Boardman's reasoning

Boardman leaned on the Supreme Court's June decision, referred to in filings as Barbara, calling it "the law of the land" and declining to weigh each of the administration's new exceptions on the merits.

"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," Boardman wrote. "This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President's most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them."

Boardman had denied CASA's earlier motion last week on a technicality — the nonprofit's original complaint cited Trump's January 2025 order — and signaled after the group amended its filing that she believed the president was "trying to rewrite the carve-outs to birthright citizenship with the stroke of a pen."

The administration's response

Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the order Wednesday night on Fox News, telling the network the ruling "is not something that is a surprise to us." He said Justice Department lawyers had written the measure to fit the Supreme Court's June opinion.

"We crafted the EO around, and in concurrence, and understanding what the Supreme Court said in their decision. And so we expected— we didn't expect this judge to say we were right," Blanche said. He added that the administration would "continue to fight as President Trump has talked about for many years" and return to the Supreme Court "if we have to."

What is missing

Today's coverage of the ruling reached the JSJ desk only through lean-left outlets — CBS News and NBC News — with no wire report or right-leaning publication yet in the file. The administration's substantive rebuttal appears here chiefly through Blanche's Fox interview and Justice Department filings cited by CBS, which argued that the Supreme Court's June decision addressed only "the children of temporary or undocumented immigrants" and "never suggested that every child born to such parents is per se a citizen, with no exceptions."

The next front is administrative: the State Department has proposed requiring parents to submit proof of their own citizenship or immigration status when applying for passports for their children, a step that would test the documentation system even if Boardman's injunction holds. Blanche said the administration is prepared to return to the Supreme Court.