Appeals court rules against Trump in birthright citizenship battle

(The Hill) — A federal appeals court ruled against President Trump on Friday, barring the administration from ending birthright citizenship.

The three-judge panel on the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court injunction that barred the administration from enacting a January executive order, signed by the president, that would curtail birthright citizenship. 

“The ‘lessons of history’ thus give us every reason to be wary of now blessing this most recent effort to break with our established tradition of recognizing birthright citizenship and to make citizenship depend on the actions of one’s parents rather than — in all but the rarest of circumstances — the simple fact of being born in the United States,” the court wrote in the 100-page ruling.

The federal appeals court in Boston became the latest court to say that the president’s push to end birthright citizenship, which states that anyone born in the U.S. are citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status, is likely unlawful. 

“Our nation’s history of efforts to restrict birthright citizenship — from Dred Scott in the decade before the Civil War to the attempted justification for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act in Wong Kim Ark — has not been a proud one,” the court’s top judge wrote in the ruling. 

The latest appeals court decision marks the fifth federal court since June to either issue or uphold orders blocking Trump’s order, just one part of his robust immigration agenda since returning to the Oval Office.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta welcomed the ruling in a post online.

“Today’s decision upholds a nationwide injunction in our lawsuit challenging the President’s attempt to end, with the stroke of a pen, the constitutional right to birthright citizenship,’ Bonta wrote Friday on social platform X.

He added, “We will continue to oppose this executive order until the President’s attempt to unmake the Constitution is blocked completely.”

The Golden State was among the 20 states included in the lawsuit.

Late last month, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to review whether Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship is constitutional.