A third court ruled Friday that President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order cannot go into effect across the country, following the Supreme Court’s decision last month clawing back nationwide injunctions.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, an appointee of former President Obama, found that the nationwide injunction he granted to more than a dozen states remains in effect because “no workable, narrower alternative” would provide the plaintiffs full relief — an exception laid out in the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Despite the defendants’ chosen path, the Court — aided substantially by the plaintiffs’ meticulous factual and legal submissions — undertook the review required of it by CASA and considered anew whether its original order swept too broadly,” Sorokin wrote in a 23-page opinion, referencing the high court decision.
“After careful consideration of the law and the facts, the Court answers that question in the negative,” he said.
Sorokin’s decision follows rulings by another district court and an appellate panel of judges that also allowed blocks on Trump’s order to remain in place for states.
The president’s directive would deny citizenship to children born in the country who don’t have at least one parent with permanent legal status. Each court to weigh in on the legality of the order has so far deemed it unconstitutional.
But in June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to curtail the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which allow relief for anyone in the country as opposed to only the parties suing.
Still, in that decision, the justices preserved some pathways for nationwide relief. They said individuals can file class action lawsuits, and states may receive nationwide injunctions if necessary for complete relief.
“The record does not support a finding that any narrower option would feasibly and adequately protect the plaintiffs from the injuries they have shown they are likely to suffer if the unlawful policy announced in the Executive Order takes effect during the pendency of this lawsuit,” Sorokin wrote.
Plaintiffs in other cases have also pursued the class-action pathway.
A federal judge in New Hampshire earlier this month barred the executive order from going into effect nationwide in a new class-action lawsuit.
Though U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante paused the decision to let the Trump administration appeal, it did not, so the order went into effect last week.
The administration still has a lengthy window in which it could appeal. But the government has lacked urgency there as compared to other cases, where emergency appeals have moved more quickly.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, whose state led the case, celebrated the ruling in a statement calling Trump’s order “flagrantly unconstitutional.”
“The district court’s decision, consistent with the Supreme Court’s own instructions, recognizes that this illegal action cannot take effect anywhere without harming New Jersey and the other States who joined in these challenges,” Platkin said. “American-born babies are American, just as they have been at every other time in our Nation’s history. The President cannot change that legal rule with the stroke of a pen.”
Updated at 5:37 p.m. EDT
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