President Donald Trump listens during a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A federal judge in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s request to partially lift the court’s nationwide injunction enjoining the federal government from enforcing or implementing Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship.
The administration sought to have the court’s universal application of the injunction narrowed so that it only provided relief to the individual plaintiffs and members of the organizations who filed the lawsuit last month while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reviews the injunction. In other words, the government wanted the birthright citizenship order to apply to everyone except those individuals specifically involved in the lawsuit.
Baltimore-based U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman on Tuesday issued a five-page order denying Trump’s request for the “stay pending appeal,” asserting that the administration is likely to lose the case because the executive order in question seeks to “overrule the Constitution ‘by executive fiat.””
Boardman reasoned that the nationwide injunction was “necessary because the Executive Order is a ‘categorical policy’ that addresses the citizenship status of people born anywhere in the United States.” Such enforcement would effectively create a tiered citizenship system in the U.S., if only temporarily.
“Were the Court to limit the injunction to the plaintiffs and the members of the plaintiff organizations, a person’s citizenship status during the pendency of this case would depend on their parents’ decision to bring this lawsuit or their parents’ membership in one of two voluntary, private organizations,” Boardman wrote. “That would make no sense. Citizenship rules should be uniform and consistent across the country. Uniformity and consistency can be ensured only through a nationwide injunction.”
