Trump’s birthright citizenship move blocked by 4th US judge

US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston granted a preliminary injunction Thursday, siding with 18 Democratic state attorneys general, the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco. Trump’s order already had been blocked by federal judges handling lawsuits filed in Seattle and Maryland.

Like judges in the other cases, Sorokin said the plaintiffs are likely to prevail in their lawsuit. He said he was bound by long-standing precedent on birthright citizenship, starting with a landmark Supreme Court ruling from 1898 that was adopted by Congress in a 1940 federal law.

Sorokin said his ruling was “based on straightforward application of settled Supreme Court precedent reiterated and reaffirmed in various ways for more than a century by all three branches of the federal government.”

Court losses over birthright citizenship are among several legal setbacks for Trump since he rolled out a slew of executive orders last month. His administration’s effort to freeze federal spending and to cull the US government workforce with buyout offers have been blocked by multiple judges. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed challenging the president’s orders.

Trump says he wants to end automatic citizenship for children born in the US whose parents are in the country unlawfully or temporarily because its being abused by undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border. The executive order would upend more than a century of court precedent around the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees citizenship for almost anyone born on US soil, regardless of immigration status.

The case is State of New Jersey v. Trump, 25-cv-10139, US District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).