Trump suffers another defeat on birthright citizenship

A federal appeals court ruled last Friday that President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship violates the Constitution, delivering another major defeat to his immigration agenda.

About the ruling: In a unanimous 100-page opinion, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld lower court injunctions blocking Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order. Under the directive, federal agencies would stop recognizing citizenship for U.S.-born children unless one parent holds citizenship or lawful permanent residency.

Last week’s First Circuit decision became the second appeals court to reject the policy after the Ninth Circuit ruled similarly in July, bringing the total to five federal courts blocking the order since June. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose state was among nearly 20 challenging the order, said the ruling “reaffirmed what we already knew to be true: The President’s attack on birthright citizenship flagrantly defies the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Writing for the three-judge panel, Chief Judge David J. Barron emphasized the clarity of the constitutional question: “the fundamental question that these cases raise about the scope of birthright citizenship is a difficult one. It is not, which may explain why it has been more than a century since a branch of our government has made as concerted an effort as the Executive Branch now makes to deny Americans their birthright.”

Why this matters: The implementation of Trump’s policy would particularly affect Asian American families holding temporary work or student visas, putting citizenship at risk for over 150,000 newborns each year.

Priya Purandare, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, stressed that “the question of a child’s citizenship in the United States ought not to be dependent on the stature or circumstances of their parents.” The legal stakes are rooted in history: Trump’s directive contradicts the Supreme Court’s 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark ruling, which determined that birthplace alone conferred citizenship on a child born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents. Such a reversal would upend legal precedent spanning more than 125 years that has anchored Asian American citizenship rights and community integration.

The big picture: The implications become clear through historical example. Bruce Lee, born in 1940 at San Francisco’s Chinese Hospital, “would have been deportable today” under these proposed restrictions, author Jeff Chang observes. The 14th Amendment at the center of this dispute was ratified in 1868 to guarantee citizenship for formerly enslaved people, and it specifies that “all persons born…in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

In its opinion, the First Circuit cautioned that “‘lessons of history’ thus give us every reason to be wary of now blessing this most recent effort to break with our established tradition.” Yet despite repeated court defeats, the administration proceeded in late July with implementation plans requiring parents to document immigration status when obtaining Social Security numbers or passports for their children.

What’s next: Two separate appeals now sit before the Supreme Court, where the administration seeks validation of its citizenship restrictions. The high court’s handling of the issue so far raises concerns. In June, the justices sidestepped the constitutional question entirely, instead issuing a procedural ruling that curtailed nationwide injunctions.

Trump has prevailed in 21 of 23 emergency Supreme Court cases since January, casting doubt on whether constitutional safeguards will hold.