US judge blocks Trump’s latest effort to limit birthright citizenship

After the Supreme Court ruled that his last attempt violated the Constitution, a United States federal judge in Maryland has blocked President Donald Trump's latest effort to roll back birthright citizenship.

Key points

• District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday against Trump's new executive order.
• In the Barbara case, the Supreme Court ruled six to three that birthright citizenship was protected under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
• Since the Supreme Court defeat in June, Trump and his allies have continued to probe for ways to challenge the constitutional protections for birthright citizenship.
• Wednesday's legal challenge was brought by immigrant rights advocates and families, including groups like the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.
• "The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are 'citizens at birth', " she wrote in Wednesday's decision.

District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday against Trump's new executive order. It was issued on August 6.

Meanwhile, the new order took aim at what Trump has called "birth tourism", the practice of intentionally giving birth on foreign soil.

It sought to deny citizenship to children of foreign nationals in certain groups, including those accused of engaging in a commercial transaction to obtain citizenship or classified as an "alien enemy".

Boardman, nevertheless, stated the order was unconstitutional for the same reason Trump's previous effort failed. She cited the Supreme Court's June decision in the case Barbara v Trump.

Notably, the order "is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth", she wrote.

"This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President's most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them."

Birthright citizenship confers automatic citizenship on anyone born in the US, outside of a handful of narrow exceptions, such as the children of diplomats or invading armies.

For context, the constitutional basis for birthright citizenship has been upheld in a number of Supreme Court cases over the years, most notably in US v Wong Kim Ark, the case of an American man born to Chinese parents.

But Trump campaigned for a second term as president on the pledge to crack down on immigration into the country.

One of his promises was to reform the concept of birthright citizenship. As they are not under the "jurisdiction" of the US, trump and his allies have argued that children of temporary or undocumented immigrants do not qualify for the right.

They had previously won an injunction from Boardman last year, blocking the Trump administration from enforcing his initial executive order regarding birthright citizenship.

Last week, Boardman instructed the plaintiffs to revise their complaint to specifically address the second executive order, rather than relying on the same material applied for the first.

But she signalled scepticism at the time regarding the constitutionality of Trump's latest attempt, calling it "unprecedented".

For now, US judge blocks Trump's latest effort to limit birthright citizenship remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.