In a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump’s sweeping attempt to upend birthright citizenship, a federal judge in New Hampshire has once again blocked the executive order—this time by maneuvering through a freshly carved path left open by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judge Joseph Laplante, presiding in Concord, took the bench with clarity and urgency. Citing the dire consequences of Trump’s directive—which aimed to strip automatic U.S. citizenship from children born to non-citizen parents—he ruled in favor of immigrant rights groups and granted provisional class action status. That move allowed him to sidestep a recent Supreme Court ruling that severely limited the power of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions.
But Laplante wasn’t improvising. The high court’s decision, handed down just weeks earlier, had left a backdoor open: class action lawsuits. And Laplante wasted no time slipping through it.
“Citizenship alone is irreparable harm,” he said from the bench. “It is the greatest privilege that exists in the world.”
Under Trump’s January executive order, babies born on U.S. soil would no longer automatically become citizens unless one parent held American citizenship or permanent residency. Advocates say this would have impacted more than 150,000 newborns each year—children rendered stateless at birth.
Laplante had previously blocked the order in February, but only for members of three nonprofit immigrant rights groups. Now, by granting class status, his new order shields potentially every affected child nationwide. He delayed implementation for seven days to allow the administration to appeal—a step the Justice Department indicated is forthcoming.
Predictably, the White House bristled. A spokesperson condemned the ruling as “an obvious and unlawful attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s clear order,” accusing Laplante of “abusing class action certification procedures.”
But immigrant advocates praised the ruling as lifesaving.
“This is going to protect every single child throughout the country from this lawless, unconstitutional, cruel executive order,” said one ACLU attorney, noting the climate of “confusion and fear” the policy had unleashed.
The battle over who qualifies as an American citizen at birth is hardly new. More than a century ago, in the landmark *Wong Kim Ark* case, the Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to children born in the U.S., regardless of parental status. Trump’s order is widely seen as an effort to test—and potentially dismantle—that precedent.
Four different judges had already declared the order likely unconstitutional, citing the amendment’s clear language. But after the Supreme Court clipped the wings of lower court judges by curbing universal injunctions, Trump’s team believed they had regained the upper hand.
What they didn’t count on was the resilience of the judiciary—and the strategic pivot to class action litigation. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority in the June decision, had explicitly acknowledged that relief for broad groups could still be sought through class actions. Laplante took that language and ran with it.
Despite his personal discomfort with issuing sweeping national orders, the judge acknowledged that this was one instance where the exception fit the facts.
“It’s a better process to narrow these decisions and not have judges create national policy,” he said. “That said, the Supreme Court suggested a class action is a better option.”
The Trump administration may yet win on appeal. But for now, the order sits frozen, its power blunted by a legal technicality turned tactical advantage.
One judge. One exception. And thousands of babies still born American.
