Federal appeals court rules Trump administration can't end birthright
citizenship
[October 04, 2025]
By MICHAEL CASEY
BOSTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in Boston ruled on Friday that the
Trump administration cannot withhold citizenship from children born to
people in the country illegally or temporarily, adding to the mounting
legal setbacks for the president’s birthright order.
A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals became the
fifth federal court since June to either issue or uphold orders blocking
the president’s birthright order. The court concluded that the
plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claims that the children
described in the order are entitled to birthright citizenship under the
Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The panel upheld lower courts' preliminary injunctions, which blocked
the birthright order while lawsuits challenging it moved ahead. The
order, signed the day the president took office in January, would halt
automatic citizenship for babies born to people in the U.S. illegally or
temporarily.
“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.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state was one of nearly 20
that were part of the lawsuit challenging the order, welcomed the
ruling.
“The First Circuit reaffirmed what we already knew to be true: The
President’s attack on birthright citizenship flagrantly defies the
Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and a nationwide
injunction is the only reasonable way to protect against its
catastrophic implications,” Bonta said in a statement. “We are glad that
the courts have continued to protect Americans’ fundamental rights.”
A second appeals court ruling on Friday also found in favor of several
organizations that challenged the birthright citizenship order. The
plaintiffs, including New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support and
League of United Latin American Citizens, were represented by the
American Civil Liberties Union.
“The federal appeals court today reinforced that this executive order is
a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution — and we agree,” said
SangYeob Kim, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Hampshire. “Our
Constitution is clear: no politician can decide who among those born in
this country is worthy of citizenship.”
In September, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to uphold
its birthright citizenship order. The appeal sets in motion a process at
the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices
by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are
constitutional.
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President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives at the White House,
Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree
Nikhinson)
“The court is misinterpreting the 14th Amendment. We look forward to
being vindicated by the Supreme Court,” White House spokesperson Abigail
Jackson said in a statement.
In July, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the third
court ruling blocking the birthright order nationwide after a key
Supreme Court decision in June. Less than two weeks later, a federal
judge in Maryland also issued a nationwide preliminary injunction
against the order. The issue is expected to move quickly back to the
nation’s highest court.
The justices ruled in June that lower courts generally can’t issue
nationwide injunctions, but they didn’t rule out other court orders that
could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and
those brought by states.
A federal judge in New Hampshire later issued a ruling prohibiting
Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide in a new
class-action suit, and a San Francisco-based appeals court affirmed a
different lower court’s nationwide injunction in a lawsuit that included
state plaintiffs.
At the heart of the lawsuits challenging the birthright order is the
14th Amendment to the Constitution, which includes a citizenship clause
that says all people born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens.
Plaintiffs in the Boston case — one of the cases the 1st Circuit
considered — told Sorokin that the principle of birthright citizenship
is “enshrined in the Constitution,” and that Trump does not have the
authority to issue the order, which they called a “flagrantly unlawful
attempt to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of
their citizenship based on their parentage.”
Justice Department attorneys argued 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.
In a landmark birthright citizenship case, the Supreme Court in 1898
found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by
virtue of his birth on American soil.
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