Appeals Court Blocks Trump’s Attempt to Restrict Birthright Citizenship
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Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block
The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It marks the first time an appeals court has weighed in and brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court. The ruling keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily. The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says that all people born or naturalized in theUnited States, and subject to U.s. jurisdiction, are citizens. The case was filed by a group of states who argued that they need a nationwide order to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship only being the law in half of the country.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.
The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It marks the first time an appeals court has weighed in and brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.
The 9th Circuit decision keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily.
“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.
The 2-1 ruling keeps in place a decision from U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour in Seattle, who blocked Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship and decried what he described as the administration’s attempt to ignore the Constitution for political gain. Coughenour was the first to block the order.
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The Supreme Court has since restricted the power of lower court judges to issue orders that affect the whole country, known as nationwide injunctions.
But the 9th Circuit majority found that the case fell under one of the exceptions left open by the justices. The case was filed by a group of states who argued that they need a nationwide order to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship only being the law in half of the country.
“We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief,” Judge Michael Hawkins and Ronald Gould, both appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote.
Judge Patrick Bumatay, who was appointed by Trump, dissented. He found that the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue. “We should approach any request for universal relief with good faith skepticism, mindful that the invocation of ‘complete relief’ isn’t a backdoor to universal injunctions,” he wrote.
Bumatay did not weigh in on whether ending birthright citizenship would be constitutional.
The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says that all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens.
Justice Department attorneys argue that the phrase “subject to United States jurisdiction” in the amendment means that citizenship isn’t automatically conferred to children based on their birth location alone.
The states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that ignores the plain language of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898 where the Supreme Court found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.
Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the U.S. is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. At least nine lawsuits challenging the order have been filed around the U.S.
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Associated Press writer Rebecca Boone contributed to this story.
Lindsay Whitehurst And Hallie Golden, The Associated Press
Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block
The ruling from a divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Mr. Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.
The ruling from a divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Mr. Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.
Also read: Donald Trump faces widespread criticism for his plan to end birthright citizenship
The 9th Circuit blocks the Trump administration from enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily.
“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.
Federal appeals court issues another blow to Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship
9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rules that President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order is unconstitutional. The ruling is the first time an appeals court has fully concluded that Trump’s order is illegal. The Supreme Court last month ordered lower courts to take a second look at a set of nationwide injunctions issued earlier this year. The Trump administration has the option of asking the full 9th Circuit to review the case, but it could also appeal the matter straight to the Supreme Court. The president’s order is already blocked on a nationwide basis after a federal judge in New Hampshire barred enforcement of it against any babies who would be impacted by the policy in a class-action lawsuit.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday issued another major blow to President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, ruling that it’s unconstitutional and upholding a nationwide block against the controversial policy.
The 2-1 ruling from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is significant because the Supreme Court late last month ordered lower courts to take a second look at a set of nationwide injunctions issued earlier this year that halted Trump’s implementation of his Day One order to ensure they weren’t broader than necessary.
The San Francisco-based appeals court decided that one such injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle in a case brought by a group of Democratic-led states did not represent a judicial overreach that needed to be reined in.
“The district court below concluded that a universal preliminary injunction is necessary to provide the states with complete relief. We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the states complete relief,” appeals court Judge Ronald Gould wrote for the majority.
“The states would suffer the same irreparable harms under a geographically-limited injunction as they would without an injunction,” Gould, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, added, explaining that a narrower injunction would require the states that challenged the law to overhaul their eligibility verification systems for various social services programs.
Wednesday’s decision also represents the first time an appeals court has fully concluded that Trump’s order is unconstitutional. The Trump administration has the option of asking the full 9th Circuit to review the case, but it could also appeal the matter straight to the Supreme Court.
“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” Gould wrote in the ruling, which was joined by appeals court judge Michael Hawkins, also a Clinton appointee.
He went on to say that Trump’s order contradicts the Citizenship Clause of the Constitution, an 1898 Supreme Court case known as United States v. Wong Kim Ark and decades of Executive Branch practice.
Trump’s order is already blocked on a nationwide basis after a federal judge in New Hampshire barred enforcement of it against any babies who would be impacted by the policy in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Such lawsuits are one of the ways the Supreme Court said plaintiffs can still try to broadly block Trump’s order.
Appeals court Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, partially dissented from the court’s ruling on Wednesday. He said he didn’t think the states who challenged Trump’s order had the legal right — known as “standing” — to bring the lawsuit in the first place. As a result, he said, he thought it was “premature to address the merits of the citizenship question or the scope of the injunction.”
US District Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee in Seattle, was the first federal judge to block Trump’s order. When he first issued an emergency order preventing enforcement of it in late January, he said it was “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block
The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It marks the first time an appeals court has weighed in and brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court. The ruling keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily. The Supreme Court has since restricted the power of lower court judges to issue orders that affect the whole country, known as nationwide injunctions. The case was filed by a group of states who argued that they need a nationwide order to prevent problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship only being the law in half of the country.
The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It marks the first time an appeals court has weighed in and brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.
The 9th Circuit decision keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily.
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“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.
The 2-1 ruling keeps in place a decision from U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour in Seattle, who blocked Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship and decried what he described as the administration’s attempt to ignore the Constitution for political gain. Coughenour was the first to block the order.
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The Supreme Court has since restricted the power of lower court judges to issue orders that affect the whole country, known as nationwide injunctions.
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But the 9th Circuit majority found that the case fell under one of the exceptions left open by the justices. The case was filed by a group of states who argued that they need a nationwide order to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship only being the law in half of the country.
“We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief,” Judge Michael Hawkins and Ronald Gould, both appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote.
Judge Patrick Bumatay, who was appointed by Trump, dissented. He found that the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue. “We should approach any request for universal relief with good faith skepticism, mindful that the invocation of ‘complete relief’ isn’t a backdoor to universal injunctions,” he wrote.
Bumatay did not weigh in on whether ending birthright citizenship would be constitutional.
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The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says that all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens.
Justice Department attorneys argue that the phrase “subject to United States jurisdiction” in the amendment means that citizenship isn’t automatically conferred to children based on their birth location alone.
The states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that ignores the plain language of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898 where the Supreme Court found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.
Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the U.S. is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. At least nine lawsuits challenging the order have been filed around the U.S.
___
Associated Press writer Rebecca Boone contributed to this story.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/us/politics/appeals-court-birthright-citizenship.html