President Donald Trump speaks during an “Invest in America” roundtable with business leaders at the White House, Monday, June 9, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The Trump administration rebuked an immigrant rights group in a court filing over its latest effort to stop the implementation of President Donald Trump”s birthright citizenship executive order.
On Monday, in a 25-page opposition motion, the U.S. Department of Justice argued the rules of civil procedure should keep the group from being certified as a class – and, in turn, should keep the group from obtaining a new injunction against the executive order.
“Plaintiffs’ request for a classwide preliminary injunction — before a class has even been certified — is inappropriate,” the government’s motion argues. “Plaintiffs cannot satisfy, at this point, the rigorous requirements of [the relevant rule], thus precluding this Court from providing classwide relief, provisionally or otherwise.”
The government’s latest filing comes in response to an attempt by CASA, Inc. to maintain most of a previously-issued injunction by reconfiguring its lawsuit as a class action.
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The motion opens with a shot across the bow deriding the long-understood notion of birthright citizenship as a grave historical error.
“Prior misimpressions of the Citizenship Clause have created a perverse incentive for illegal immigration that has negatively impacted this country’s sovereignty, national security, and economic stability,” the opposition motion reads. “But the generation that enacted the Fourteenth Amendment did not fate the United States to such a reality. Instead, text, history, and precedent support what common sense compels: the Constitution does not harbor a windfall clause granting American citizenship to, inter alia, the children of those who have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws.”
The underlying lawsuit in the case was filed on Jan. 21, precisely one day after the 45th and 47th president issued Executive Order 14160. The order attempts to usher in a sea change of constitutional interpretation where the automatic grant of citizenship does not extend to a child born in the United States to an undocumented mother — unless the father has some form of legal status.
In the intervening months, the lawsuit was one of many successful challenges to Trump’s order consolidated before the U.S. Supreme Court. Those challenges, however, did not reach the justices on the merits but as part of a tactical attack on the constitutional validity of nationwide, or universal, injunctions. And that attack, of course, ended largely with a victory for the Trump administration.
But the nation’s high court left some substantially similar — though procedurally distinct — relief on the table: the class action.
To hear CASA tell it, the case remains a live controversy and the prior injunction in the case issued by Baltimore-based U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman, a Joe Biden appointee, can essentially be re-issued with one minor change – allowing the Trump administration to “develop and issue public guidance about the Executive’s plans to implement the Executive Order” – if the plaintiffs are simply reorganized, and concomitantly granted injunctive relief, as a class.
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The DOJ, in its opposition motion, understands the novel legal territory created by the government’s recent 6-3 victory – and it is pushing for the lower court not to accept the new maps.
“Plaintiffs have just repleaded their Complaint to add new Plaintiffs and class action allegations while moving for class certification,” the opposition motion continues. “And despite the Supreme Court rejecting the universal injunction previously sought and obtained in this lawsuit, Plaintiffs come to Court asking for a classwide, nationwide preliminary injunction to enjoin the President’s EO. The relief Plaintiffs seek is functionally no different from their prior (and now forbidden) universal injunction, and Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion for a Class-wide Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction should be denied.”
The government notes that the original injunction in the case – despite being effectively revoked by the Supreme Court – is currently being considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. This means the district court simply lacks jurisdiction to issue a new one, or modify the earlier one, the DOJ argues.
From the opposition motion, at length:
Plaintiffs’ newly filed motion seeks to challenge the same Executive Order and seeks an equivalent scope of relief as their prior preliminary injunction, but Plaintiffs now do so through the vehicle of a class action. Plaintiffs do not get a second bite at the apple by bringing a nationwide class action while also continuing to maintain the nationwide preliminary injunction this Court has already granted in this case. This is the functional equivalent of an improper modification of that preliminary injunction, which of course is now before the Fourth Circuit. And Plaintiffs do not identify an exception permitting this Court to modify its prior injunction while an appeal is pending, nor could they; there is nothing imprecise about the district court’s original injunction on appeal and their injunction would alter the status quo as it exists.
The government also says the district court, if it decides to exercise jurisdiction over the class action request under an exception to the general rule, should rule against the plaintiffs anyway because they cannot satisfy the “rigorous requirements” of the class action rule.
First of all, CASA is asking out of order, the government says.
“[The] Rule contemplates that injunctive relief is generally appropriate only after a court has assured itself that the class action can be certified and that the relief granted to [a] class is ‘final injunctive relief,'” the opposition motion goes on. “That course of events is sensible given that courts have concluded that ‘discovery is necessary to resolve issues such as class certification.'”
The government then dips into the merits of the birthright citizenship executive order by arguing that there are “divergent factual and legal issues” among the would-be class members who would be covered by the requested nationwide injunction.
“Specifically, Defendants argue that no person covered by the Executive Order is ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment and [federal law],” the opposition motion continues. “That is because the words ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ refer to an individual’s domicile, and, Defendants contend, individuals covered by the Executive Order are not domiciled in the United States. But if a court were to accept Defendants’ first premise (that birthright citizenship depends on domicile) and not their second (that individuals covered by the Executive Order are categorically not domiciled in the United States), then whether different class members are entitled to relief depends upon individualized factual determinations—and attendant legal analysis—regarding their domiciles.”
In a similar vein, the government argues the plaintiffs are too dissimilar to make up a class in the first place. Here, the opposition motion cites the various legal statuses of the known plaintiffs. For example, some plaintiffs are asylum-seekers, one is in the country on a tourist visa, another has temporary protected status, and so on.
“While the Plaintiffs represent a cross-section of non-citizens without [legal permanent resident] status, they still are not ‘typical’ of a class that includes parents who are present in the United States on a tourist visa for a planned one-week stay for the purpose of giving birth (e.g., birth tourists), parents who are present in the United States on a tourist visa for a planned one-week stay and gave birth prematurely and have no intent to ever return to the United States, parents who have been present in the United States on a student visa for a decade, children of all of those groups, and many others,” the motion goes on.
The government also rubbishes the basic nature of some of the putative class members as factually unworkable.
“Plaintiffs also err in asking this Court to certify a class that includes ‘All children who have been born or will be born in the United States on or after February 19, 2025 . . . and their parents’ who are covered by the Executive Order,” the opposition motion goes on. “A person may maintain a suit in federal court, whether as an individual or as a class member, only if he has standing and has the legal capacity to sue. But persons who ‘will be born’—i.e., persons who have not yet been conceived—lack either standing or capacity to sue.”
