This article was prepared with the assistance of ABIL, the Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers, of which Loan Huynh is an active member.
On July 10, 2025, a federal judge in New Hampshire provisionally certified a class consisting of all children born in the United States on or after February 20, 2025, to parents who are present temporarily or without authorization, then issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking enforcement of the Trump administration's birthright citizenship ban.
The judge said that "this court has no hesitation determining this situation warrants emergency injunctive relief and class certification. The respondents' proposed course of action would reverse a nationally known and recognized government policy in place for over a century and affect thousands of families." Denial of citizenship status at birth "can have immediate, irreversible effects," the judge noted, adding that the Executive Order in question "likely violates the Fourteenth Amendment" of the U.S. Constitution and the related statute codifying it (8 U.S.C. § 1401).
The judge said that the certified class includes only those persons for whom the Executive Order would deny citizenship but does not include their parents, as the petitioners had requested. The class therefore includes:
All current and future persons who are born on or after February 20, 2025, where (1) that person's mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person's father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person's birth, or (2) that person's mother's presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person's father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person's birth.
The judge noted that including future class members "is no bar to class certification. Although the future class member children in this case have yet to be born, as soon as they are born, they will join the class and their claims will be ripe."
