Second federal judge pauses Trump birthright citizenship order

U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Boardman on Wednesday paused President Donald Trump’s executive order ending the practice of automatically granting citizenship to individuals born on American soil, the Associated Press reported. Boardman verbally delivered her ruling to lawyers at a Wednesday hearing for a federal case brought in Maryland. She said that her ruling applied to the whole country. She added that Trump’s interpretation of the law likely violated the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit on which Boardman ruled Wednesday was filed by two advocacy groups, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and CASA, Inc., with several pregnant mothers. The plaintiffs argued that Trump’s executive order violated the Constitution and represented a significant departure from American legal precedent on citizenship.

Didn’t another judge already rule on this? A federal judge in Seattle, Wash., last month issued a temporary injunction preventing federal authorities from enforcing Trump’s executive order. In that case, several states filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the order was unconstitutional. The pause, originally for two weeks, was recently extended.

Dig deeper: Read Addie Offereins’ report in Compassion about what many of Trump’s immigration-oriented executive orders mean for those who’ve moved their lives into the United States.