A federal appeals court on Wednesday affirmed a nationwide (or universal) preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held 2–1 that the challengers, four states, were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the executive order is unconstitutional.
The Ninth Circuit’s decision comes less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court held that some “[u]niversal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given federal courts,” as Legal Insurrection reported.
That decision, Trump v. CASA, Inc. (2025), dealt with universal injunctions that extended beyond the individual plaintiffs who sought them. The Court did not address the issue of universal injunctions granted to state plaintiffs:
As the States see it, their harms—financial injuries and the administrative burdens flowing from citizen-dependent benefits programs—cannot be remedied without a blanket ban on the enforcement of the Executive Order. Children often move across state lines or are born outside their parents’ State of residence. . . . The lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate, so we leave it to them to consider these and any related arguments.
The Ninth Circuit dismissed the claims of individual plaintiffs because another court’s certified class action covered them. Answering the Supreme Court’s call in CASA, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the lower court “that a universal preliminary injunction is necessary to give the States complete relief.”
The Ninth Circuit held that issuing a nationwide preliminary injunction for the state plaintiffs was within the lower court’s power because of the likelihood of interstate travel:
We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief. States’ residents may give birth in a non-party state, and individuals subject to the Executive Order from non-party states will inevitably move to the States.
The Ninth Circuit parties’ dispute over the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause and its grant of birthright citizenship came down to one phrase:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. (emphasis added)
The Trump administration argued that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” referred not to “regulatory jurisdiction,” where an individual is subject to the laws of the United States. Instead, the administration argued, the phrase referred to “political jurisdiction,” which the administration “define[d] as ‘a concept rooted in allegiance and protection.'”
Under the administration’s theory, an individual is only “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States if that individual “owe[s] primary allegiance to the United States,” exempting children born in the United States to illegal immigrants or temporary visa holders.
The states contended that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” only “exempts a small and well-defined group of people who are born in United States territory yet not subject to United States authority,” such as the children of foreign ambassadors and the children of foreign soldiers during an invasion.
The Ninth Circuit flatly rejected the administration’s view:
We conclude that the text of the Fourteenth Amendment supports the Plaintiffs’ interpretation. In interpreting the text of the Constitution, courts are guided by the principle that the Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning. (cleaned up)
When the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted, the Ninth Circuit noted, “jurisdiction” was understood as a “reference to the power of the courts” to adjudicate disputes or to “regulatory jurisdiction,” such as the power to legislate or govern.
The Ninth Circuit found support for this position in a landmark Supreme Court decision interpreting the Citizenship Clause, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). In Wong Kim Ark, the Court had to determine whether Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the United States to Chinese alien parents, obtained United States citizenship at birth.
The Court in Wong Kim Ark held 6–2 that Wong Kim Ark obtained citizenship “by virtue of the [Citizenship Clause] of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”
The Ninth Circuit, surveying Wong Kim Ark, found no requirement that birthright citizenship is conditioned on “primary allegiance,” as the administration argued. “Instead, [the Supreme Court] considered allegiance to be part and parcel of . . . ‘regulatory’ jurisdiction,” the Ninth Circuit noted.
One judge on the panel dissented on narrow grounds, arguing the states lacked standing to sue because their asserted harms were too speculative or self-inflicted.
The opinion:
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