A judge in the US told Trump to pump the brakes on his plan to end birthright citizenship for some folks. The legal battle’s still raging, so nothing’s changing just yet.
This time, it was a judge in New Hampshire who said, “Nope, not so fast,” and greenlit a class action lawsuit against Trump’s executive order. Basically, the ACLU stepped in, repping a bunch of immigrant parents and their babies, and managed to get the whole thing on pause.
What’s wild is this all happened not long after the Supreme Court basically drew up new rules for when federal courts can go full throttle with these universal injunctions. Even with the new guidelines, though, this lawsuit squeaked through, so now we’re all just waiting to see what happens next.
Of course, the White House threw a fit no surprise there. Harrison Fields, one of Trump’s mouthpieces, blasted the judge for “abusing” class action rules and called the whole thing an “obvious and unlawful attempt” to dodge the Supreme Court’s ruling. Honestly, the way he put it, you’d think the judge personally insulted the Constitution or something.
The heart of the matter: the Constitution’s pretty clear if you’re born here, you’re in. Trump wanted to take that away from babies born to undocumented immigrants and tourists, as part of his whole anti-immigration crusade. The lawsuit’s arguing this whole move is both harmful and unconstitutional, and the judge agreed there’s enough here to let the case play out for all the affected babies.
For now, Trump’s order is on ice again, and the government’s got a week to appeal. Not the first time this particular agenda got blocked, either. Courts all over the country have been slapping nationwide injunctions on it left and right.
The administration, of course, tried to get the Supreme Court to smack down those blocks, arguing that judges don’t have the power to freeze presidential orders for the whole country. The Supreme Court’s conservative justices mostly took Trump’s side at least when it comes to limiting judge power but didn’t actually touch the whole birthright citizenship question.
So, long story short? Trump’s order was supposed to kick in on July 27, but with all this legal ping-pong, who knows what’s next.