The Daily Fuckup

The Fourth Circuit on July 29 dismissed the Trump administration’s appeal in the Maryland birthright-citizenship case and remanded it to the district court. The order did not reach the merits of whether the executive order can rewrite who gets citizenship at birth. Instead, it cleared the way for U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman to move forward on the plaintiffs’ request for class-wide preliminary relief, after the Supreme Court’s June 27 ruling narrowed how broad injunctions can be.

In the order, the appeals court said the better course was to dismiss the pending appeal and return the case so the district court could act on the plaintiffs’ motion for class-wide relief. The panel noted that this would let the lower court conform any injunction to the Supreme Court’s instructions and allow an immediate ruling on the class-wide request, with appellate review to come later. The court acted after the district judge issued an indicative ruling saying she would grant class-wide preliminary relief if she had jurisdiction to do so.

That procedural move matters because it keeps the fight focused on the scope of relief, not on a fresh merits ruling from Richmond. The administration’s birthright-citizenship policy remains blocked, but the July 29 order itself did not independently impose a new nationwide ban or lift one. It sent the case back so the district court could decide whether to enter class-wide relief that would apply more broadly than the original plaintiff-by-plaintiff injunction.

The litigation has become a test of how far the White House can push executive power in immigration policy and how quickly courts will let it move. Trump’s order, signed on January 20, seeks to deny citizenship to some children born in the United States to noncitizen parents. Civil-rights groups and others challenging it argue that the 14th Amendment bars that result. The July 29 ruling does not resolve that dispute. It does, however, keep the district court in the driver’s seat for the next round and makes clear the administration still has not found a clean path to putting the policy into effect.