President Donald Trump’s executive order to end so-called birthright citizenship for babies of undocumented immigrants was blocked indefinitely by a fourth federal judge, handing the administration another legal setback and signaling an uphill constitutional fight.

U.S. 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. The ruling puts the executive order on hold until the case is resolved.

Sorokin, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, said his ruling was based on “straightforward application” of settled legal precedent that’s been “reiterated and reaffirmed in various ways for more than a century by all three branches of the federal government.”

Trump’s order already had been blocked in parallel cases in Seattle, Maryland and New Hampshire, including by one judge who called the directive “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Trump wants to end automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. whose parents are in the country unlawfully or temporarily because he says its being abused by undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border. It’s part of a broader crackdown on immigration by the Trump administration, including efforts to block asylum proceedings and deport individuals faster.

“These unlawful injunctions are a continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The White House will continue to fight these battles in court, and we expect to be vindicated. The President has every right to exercise his executive authority on behalf of the American people, who gave him a historic mandate to govern on November 5th.”

Long-standing precedent

Sorokin, like the other judges, said the plaintiffs are likely to prevail in their lawsuit. The judge said he was bound by long-standing precedent around the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, where birthright originates, starting with a landmark Supreme Court ruling from 1898 that was adopted by Congress in a 1940 federal law.

“Simply put, the Amendment is the nation’s consent to accept and protect as citizens those born here, subject to the few narrow exceptions recognized at the time of enactment, none of which are at issue here,” Sorokin said in his written order.

Court losses over birthright citizenship are among several legal setbacks for Trump since he rolled out a slew of executive orders last month. His effort to freeze federal spending and allow billionaire Elon Musk’s government efficiency team access to Treasury Department payments data have been blocked by judges. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed challenging the president’s orders.

“We stood up for the Constitution and won,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, who is leading the multi-state lawsuit over the birthright order, said in a post on X. “Trump’s attack on the rule of law isn’t over, but we can and will fight back.”

Sorokin rejected several government arguments, including Trump’s suggestion that babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants lack the necessary allegiance required for citizenship. The judge said allegiance is a “fact of birth” that “does not depend on the status of a child’s parents.”

“Applying the defendants’ view of allegiance would mean children of dual citizens and lawful permanent residents would not be birthright citizens — a result even the defendants do not support,” the judge wrote.

Sorokin also shot down the theory that birthright citizenship requires the consent of both the person and the nation. The judge said the purpose of the 14th Amendment — to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people after the Civil War — undermined that argument.

“This theory disregards the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment: to recognize as birthright citizens the children of enslaved persons who did not enter the country consensually, but were brought to our shores in chains,” the judge wrote. “There is no basis to think the drafters imposed a requirement excluding the very people the Amendment aimed to make citizens.”

Multiple injunctions are a challenge for the administration because even if one gets overturned on appeal, others remain in place. The geographic spread of the lawsuits, filed in courts across the U.S., also means that the appeals process will move to different federal circuits, which strategically can improve the odds of keeping at least one injunction in place.

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

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