Federal judge in New Hampshire blocks birthright citizenship ban for all infants

A federal judge in New Hampshire blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship and granted nationwide class certification status to all infants impacted by the order on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante said that he will issue a written ruling by the end of the day further explaining his decision. The injunction also narrows down the scope of the class to infants, removing parents from the case. 

In his order, LaPlante ruled that deprivation of citizenship, as held by the 14th Amendment, and changes in longstanding policy would create “irreparable harm.”

Still, it is almost sure to be quickly appealed by the Trump administration. It comes after the Supreme Court reviewed the case earlier this year, and ruled 6-3 in late June that plaintiffs seeking nationwide relief must file their cases as a class action lawsuit — narrowing the instances in which lower district courts can issue so-called universal injunctions.

That high court ruling narrowly focused on the authority of lower courts, and justices did not wade into the legality of Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, which served as the legal pretext for the case.

Still, Justice Department officials told a federal judge last week they plan to begin enforcing Trump’s birthright citizenship order as early as July 27, in recognition of a 30-day stay included in the Supreme Court’s ruling, showing they plan to act quickly. 

Trump’s order, signed on the first day of his second White House term, directs all U.S. government agencies to refuse to issue citizenship documents to children born to illegal immigrants, or who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen of lawful permanent resident.

The order, signed by Trump on his first day in office, was immediately challenged in January by more than 22 U.S. states and immigrants’ rights groups, which argued the effort to end birthright citizenship was both unconstitutional and “unprecedented,” and threatened more than 100 years of legal precedent. 

It was almost immediately blocked by lower courts, before eventually making its way to the Supreme Court for review in May.

The high court’s decision also touched off a flurry of new lawsuits from the ACLU and other immigration advocacy groups, who re-filed class action lawsuits in federal courts in Maryland and in New Hampshire, where LaPlante reviewed the request Thursday.

Lawyers for the Trump administration stressed last week that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not preclude it from taking other actions before that date, and told U.S. it plans to “immediately” begin developing and issuing public guidance on the order.

Advocates have warned possible fallout from the order could prove “catastrophic.”