4th Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order

A fourth federal judge on Thursday blocked President Trump’s executive order seeking to terminate birthright citizenship, joining the growing number of courts that have prevented the president from implementing his directive while a slew of legal challenges continue.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, who sits on the federal district court in Massachusetts, said that a group of 19 states and the District of Columbia, as well as two nonprofit organizations, are likely to prevail on the merits of their claims. The challengers have argued that Mr. Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day in office, violates the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.

“The Constitution confers birthright citizenship broadly, including to persons within the categories described in the EO,” Sorokin, appointed by former President Barack Obama, wrote in a 31-page decision.

Sorokin joins federal judges in Maryland, Washington and New Hampshire that have issued preliminary injunctions blocking the Trump administration from enforcing the birthright citizenship executive order. The Justice Department has appealed two of those decisions to federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Virginia.

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At least eight lawsuits have been filed in courts from coast to coast that challenge Mr. Trump’s directive. {snip}

The decisions from the federal judges against the Trump administration rely on an 1898 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the court held that a man born in the U.S. to Chinese immigrants was a citizen by virtue of the Constitution.

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