A second birthright-citizenship order five weeks after the Supreme Court decided the question, enjoined again

Editor's note: a federal court enjoined the order as almost certainly unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's ruling on birthright citizenship.

The Supreme Court decided the question in June. In Trump v. Barbara, decided June 30, 2026, it held that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That was the question raised by Executive Order 14160 of January 20, 2025. On August 6, 2026 the president signed Executive Order 14418, which cites Barbara and states as policy that no executive department or agency shall issue documents recognising United States citizenship for certain children born in the country whose parents are not citizens. The categories it names include children of alien enemies or designated terrorists, children of foreign government employees, children whose parents paid to obtain birthright citizenship, and births in certain territories. It directed every agency head to issue public guidance within 30 days.

A federal court blocked it four weeks later. On September 2, 2026 Judge Deborah Boardman of the District of Maryland held in a 35-page ruling that the August order is almost certainly unconstitutional, and the White House called her an activist judge. The ruling rests on Barbara having already decided that the children in question are citizens at birth, and it applies to a class the court had previously certified rather than to every application of the order. Boardman had at first declined, on August 28, to issue a temporary restraining order, calling the order unprecedented but directing the plaintiffs to revise their complaint first.

The administration's defence is that it followed the ruling rather than defied it. The Attorney General said the order was crafted in concurrence with, and understanding of, what the Supreme Court said, and the administration has said it will return to the Supreme Court if necessary. The order is narrower than the January 2025 one, and the categories it targets were not all before the Court in Barbara, which is the government's distinguishing argument. The president framed the order as protection against malign foreign actors who take advantage of the country's generosity. What the record establishes is a second order on the same subject five weeks after the Court resolved it, and a court finding that order almost certainly unconstitutional for the class before it.