Appeals court upholds birthright citizenship and nationwide preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s illegal executive order from taking effect
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (October 3, 2025) — City Attorney David Chiu issued the following statement today after the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld birthright citizenship and affirmed a lower court decision to grant a nationwide preliminary injunction preventing President Trump’s unconstitutional executive order terminating birthright citizenship from taking effect.
“Birthright citizenship is as clear cut as legal precedents come,” said San Francisco City Attorney Chiu. “I am grateful the courts continue to understand that Trump’s order is blatantly unconstitutional and that nationwide relief is imperative. This Executive Order would significantly harm local jurisdictions like San Francisco that stand to lose significant federal funding if it were upheld. It would sow chaos and confusion about the legal status of numerous newly-born American citizens.”
Case Background
President Trump issued an executive order on January 20, 2025, to end birthright citizenship, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Section 1401 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
To stop the President’s unlawful action, which would harm hundreds of thousands of American children and their families, San Francisco and coalition of states sued in the District of Massachusetts to invalidate the executive order and to enjoin any actions taken to implement it. The jurisdictions requested immediate relief to prevent the President’s Order from taking effect. Judge Leo Sorokin granted the Plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction order on February 13, 2025, preventing the birthright citizenship order from taking effect nationwide.
The Trump Administration appealed the preliminary injunction order and eventually filed an emergency petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the separate legal issue of whether federal district court judges can issue universal injunctions that prohibit or require behavior nationwide. On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. CASA, Inc. that federal district court judges cannot issue nationwide preliminary injunction orders unless necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court then ordered the District Court to reconsider whether the nationwide injunction in the birthright citizenship case is necessary.
On July 30, the Judge Sorokin affirmed that a nationwide injunction was necessary in this case, and today’s decision by the First Circuit affirms that decision, recognizing the issue was not a difficult one, “which may explain why it has been more than a century since a branch of our government has made as concerted an effort as the Executive Branch now makes to deny Americans their birthright.”
Birthright Citizenship
Birthright citizenship dates back centuries—including to pre-Civil War America. Although the Supreme Court’s notorious decision in Dred Scott denied birthright citizenship to the descendants of slaves, the post-Civil War United States adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to protect citizenship for all children born in this country.
In 1895, Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese American born in San Francisco on Sacramento Street to immigrant parents, was traveling back from China to his home in San Francisco. He was denied re-entry into the United States at the Port of San Francisco on the grounds that he was not a citizen and so was subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited entry of Chinese nationals into the United States. With the support of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, Wong Kim Ark challenged this decision all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, ruled in favor of Wong Kim Ark, finding that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment automatically made him a U.S. citizen, and thus, he could not be denied entry into his home country.
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that birthright citizenship does not depend on the immigration status of the baby’s parents. If allowed to stand, the Executive Order—for the first time since the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868—would mean thousands of babies born each year in San Francisco and across the country, who otherwise would have been citizens, will no longer enjoy the privileges and benefits of citizenship.
The children whose citizenship would be stripped by the President’s Order would lose their most basic rights, and would be forced to live under the threat of deportation. They would lose eligibility for a wide range of federal services and programs. They would lose their ability obtain a Social Security number and, as they age, to work lawfully. They would also lose their ability to obtain a passport. And they would lose their right to vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices. Despite the Constitution’s guarantee of citizenship, thousands of American children would—for the first time—lose their ability to fully and fairly be a part of American society as a citizen with all its benefits and privileges.
In addition to harming hundreds of thousands of residents, the President’s order would significantly harm state and local jurisdictions. Among other things, the Order would cause the jurisdictions to lose federal funding to programs that they administer, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and foster care and adoption assistance programs, which all turn in part on the immigration status of the resident being served. Cities and states would also be required—at their considerable expense—to immediately begin modifying their operation and administration of benefits programs to account for this change, which would impose significant burdens on multiple agencies that operate programs for residents. The Plaintiff jurisdictions’ filings explain that they should not have to bear these dramatic costs while their case proceeds because the Order is directly inconsistent with the Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
The City and County of San Francisco is joined in this lawsuit by the states of California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia.
The case is the State of New Jersey et al., v. Donald J. Trump et al., U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Case No. 25-1169. The Court’s decision can be found here.
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