In a rebuke that cuts to the constitutional bone, a U.S. federal appeals court has struck down Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to gut birthright citizenship, ruling it flat-out unconstitutional and unenforceable nationwide.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, became the first appellate court to weigh in on the legality of Trump’s controversial directive, which he signed the moment he returned to the Oval Office in January. The order aimed to deny automatic citizenship to children born on U.S. soil unless at least one parent was either a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. But the court wasn’t buying it.
“The President cannot redefine what it means to be American with the stroke of a pen,” declared Washington’s Attorney General, one of several officials from states that sued to stop the order—namely Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and Illinois. The court agreed, saying anything short of a nationwide halt wouldn’t shield those states from the fallout.
The ruling also reaffirmed an earlier decision by a Reagan-appointed federal judge in Seattle, who blasted the order as “blatantly unconstitutional.” Wednesday’s majority opinion echoed that sentiment, grounding its argument in the bedrock of the Fourteenth Amendment, which has long guaranteed that nearly anyone born in the United States is, indeed, a citizen.
Judge Ronald Gould, who wrote the majority opinion, made clear that partial injunctions just wouldn’t cut it. A fragmented approach, he said, would force states to rewrite entire benefits systems to accommodate people wrongly stripped of their citizenship.
“It is impossible to avoid this harm absent a uniform application of the citizenship clause throughout the United States,” he wrote. Fellow Clinton-era appointee Judge Michael Hawkins agreed.
But dissenting Judge Patrick Bumatay, appointed by Trump himself, argued that the suing states had no legal standing and warned of “judicial overreach.”
As the legal chess match continues, the Trump administration now faces two choices: ask a larger bench at the 9th Circuit to revisit the decision or take it straight to the Supreme Court. Given the stakes—and Trump’s ongoing legal and political battles—bet on the latter.
The high court, which already weighed in last month on how far federal judges can go with nationwide injunctions, is expected to have the final say. But as of now, the Constitution’s promise of citizenship to all born under the flag still holds—no pen or executive decree can rewrite that.
