A US federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s highly criticised executive order, which seeks to restrict birthright citizenship in the country.
This marks a significant setback for Trump’s attempt to end the constitutionally enshrined right, which has existed for over a century.
“The denial of the precious right to citizenship will cause irreparable harm,” District Judge Deborah Boardman said on Wednesday during a hearing at a Maryland court.
With the ruling, the enforcement of the executive order, scheduled to take effect nationwide on 19 February, will be put on hold.
The court ruled that Supreme Court precedent protects birthright citizenship, adding that Trump’s order “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment,” The Washington Post quoted the judge as saying.
“No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” she said. “This court will not be the first.”
Already, there is a 14-day stay of execution on the enforcement of the executive order, issued in January by a federal judge in Washington state.
US District Judge John Coughenour at that time condemned the order as “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the US Constitution under the 14th Amendment, which decrees that anyone born on US soil is a citizen.
Trump’s order was premised on the idea that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country and therefore excluded from this category.
His opponents have argued that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 as the United States sought to recover from the Civil War, has been settled law for over a century.
They have cited an 1898 US Supreme Court ruling in the case of a Chinese-American man named Wong Kim Ark, who was denied re-entry to the United States on the grounds that he was not a citizen.
The court affirmed that children born in the United States, including those born to immigrants, could not be denied citizenship.
