ACLU and immigrant rights groups ask New Hampshire judge to block Trump's new birthright citizenship orders
The Facts
- The ACLU and other immigrant rights groups asked a federal judge on Aug. 11 to prevent the Trump administration from enforcing new executive orders limiting birthright citizenship.
- The filing was made in federal court in New Hampshire, before the judge who handled the earlier challenge to Trump's first birthright citizenship order.
- Trump signed two new executive orders on the subject on Aug. 6.
- The Supreme Court ruled in June that Trump's earlier executive order, issued the day he began his second term, conflicted with the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.
- That Supreme Court ruling came in the case Trump v. Barbara, which struck down the earlier order denying birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and people on temporary visas.
- An existing court injunction bars the administration from denying citizenship to babies whose mothers hold temporary visas or are in the U.S. without legal status; the plaintiffs asked the judge to declare that one of the new orders violates that injunction or to issue a new order making clear it cannot be enforced against them.
- The plaintiffs argue the Supreme Court's decision should have settled the question, and that further executive orders creating new exceptions to the Citizenship Clause would be equally unlawful.
- The new orders are narrower than the original directive: one seeks to expand categories the 14th Amendment already treats as ineligible for automatic citizenship, while the other directs agency officials to address so-called birth tourism, which Trump has cited as a justification.
- Challenges to the new orders were filed by plaintiffs in more than one of the earlier cases, including the Barbara case and a case brought by the group CASA.
Context
What is birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment?
The 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are U.S. citizens theepochtimes.com. Under the longstanding understanding, those born on U.S. soil are citizens — with certain limited exceptions — regardless of whether their parents are in the country legally Hill. The Supreme Court's June ruling described the guarantee as covering nearly all babies born on U.S. soil CNN International.
How do the new orders differ from the one the Supreme Court struck down?
The first order sought broadly to deny automatic citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents Guardian. The new orders are narrower: one would have federal agencies decline to recognize citizenship in certain circumstances involving non-citizen parents and seeks to expand existing narrow exceptions in the 14th Amendment, while the other directs agency heads to act on birth tourism CNN International Al Jazeera Online theepochtimes.com.
Why did the groups file a motion instead of a new lawsuit?
The plaintiffs went back to the judge already overseeing the original case, asking him to make clear that the injunction he issued against the first order also covers the new directive — or to grant a new injunction to the same effect USA Today Reason MoneyControl. They also argued that courts should not be required to issue an endless series of order-specific injunctions each time a new directive is signed New Republic.
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- Both reads accept that the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause genuinely constrains the executive and that June's ruling covered undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders; the fight is over scope.
- Where Left and Right split
- The left and the right split on whether June's ruling settled birthright citizenship or left narrower ground open.
How left and right read it
Constitutional guarantees are not policy dials to be reset until an administration gets the answer it wants. The Supreme Court held in June that denying birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders violates the 14th Amendment; two new orders followed on Aug. 6, pushing the same plaintiffs back into court on Aug. 11. Newborns bear the risk. Settled means settled.
“Despite losing at the Supreme Court on the legal issue in late June, the Trump administration remains committed to twisting a long-settled constitutional question into a tool to keep Black and brown people out of American life.” — Slate Magazine
A sovereign nation gets to decide who joins it, and the birth-tourism directive signed Aug. 6 goes at a real problem: temporary entry converted into a permanent claim on the country. The new orders are narrower than the first — one addresses categories the 14th Amendment already treats as ineligible, the other tells agency officials to confront birth tourism. If a June ruling on undocumented immigrants and visa holders forecloses even that, what remains of self-government over citizenship?
“The Supreme Court's ruling means every illegal entry, visa overstay, and birth tourism visit continues to carry a citizenship multiplier.” — Townhall
This isn't really a story about two executive orders — it's about who decides how far a constitutional ruling reaches, the Court or the elected government.
The receipts — all 62 sources
Wire services (3)
Independent coverage (50)
Facts first. Then every angle.
The day’s biggest stories in one short brief — the facts everyone agrees on, then the competing values behind the headlines. Free in your inbox.