A federal judge who previously blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship spent more than an hour Friday grappling with whether his nationwide injunction could stand after the Supreme Court curbed the ability of judges to issue such broad rulings.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin of the federal court in Boston made clear during a hearing that he intended to keep intact some of his earlier ruling against the birthright citizenship executive order issued by Trump on his first day back in office.
He grilled Trump administration lawyers and a group of Democratic attorneys general from more than a dozen states, the District of Columbia and several cities, on major questions about whether his nationwide injunction would still hold after the conservative Supreme Court instructed lower courts to take a second look at such rulings to ensure they weren’t overbroad.