A federal appeals court has slammed the brakes on President Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, delivering a sharp rebuke to one of his most controversial executive orders. In a major decision on Friday, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld a lower court’s injunction, blocking the administration from carrying out a January directive aimed at curtailing the constitutional guarantee that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen.
In a pointed 100-page ruling, the three-judge panel made it clear: the president’s executive order doesn’t hold water. “The ‘lessons of history’ thus give us every reason to be wary of now blessing this most recent effort to break with our established tradition of recognizing birthright citizenship and to make citizenship depend on the actions of one’s parents rather than — in all but the rarest of circumstances — the simple fact of being born in the United States,” the court wrote.
It’s the fifth time since June that a federal court has blocked or struck down Trump’s efforts to roll back birthright citizenship — a clear pattern of legal resistance to one of his flagship immigration moves since returning to office.
This particular decision didn’t mince words. Referencing the nation’s dark past of discriminatory citizenship laws, the court’s chief judge drew a direct line to historical wrongs. “Our nation’s history of efforts to restrict birthright citizenship — from Dred Scott in the decade before the Civil War to the attempted justification for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act in Wong Kim Ark — has not been a proud one,” the judge wrote.
The ruling underscores the legal and moral landmines surrounding any attempt to rewrite a constitutional right through executive fiat. The 14th Amendment — guaranteeing citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” — has long been considered untouchable by mere presidential order. Trump’s effort to bulldoze that precedent was always going to face fierce opposition in the courts. Now it’s official: at least five federal benches agree it’s likely unconstitutional.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state was among 20 that challenged the executive order, didn’t hold back in his reaction. “Today’s decision upholds a nationwide injunction in our lawsuit challenging the President’s attempt to end, with the stroke of a pen, the constitutional right to birthright citizenship,” Bonta posted Friday on X. “We will continue to oppose this executive order until the President’s attempt to unmake the Constitution is blocked completely.”
The Department of Justice has already taken steps to escalate the fight, formally asking the Supreme Court last month to weigh in on the constitutionality of the order. If the high court agrees to hear the case, the next round of this legal battle could reshape the future of immigration policy — or reaffirm the hard limits of presidential power.
