After a recent defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court, an immigrant rights group that had previously succeeded in halting the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order has initiated a new lawsuit, now as a class action.

The prompt filing by CASA seeks intervention from Baltimore-based U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman, appointed by Joe Biden, to grant a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on an urgent basis.

The 10-page motion, in line with the high court’s landmark opinion, defines the would-be class seeking relief from the government’s plans to get rid of the long-accepted notion of birthright citizenship.

“Plaintiffs request that this Court immediately enter an injunction that prohibits Defendants from implementing or enforcing Executive Order 14,160 against anyone who is part of the following putative class: ‘All children who have been born or will be born in the United States on or after February 19, 2025, who are designated by Executive Order 14,160 to be ineligible for birthright citizenship, and their parents,'” the motion reads.

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The plaintiffs suggest they have offered an easy fix to the state of affairs created by Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion, which fully dispensed with nationwide injunctions in U.S. law.

“The Supreme Court’s recent stay opinion acknowledges that courts may award injunctive relief beyond the named parties when the case is brought as a class action,” the motion goes on.

In the majority opinion, Barrett cited the lack of a historical analogue to the nationwide injunction “at the founding” as the primary justification for issuing the sea change in civil procedure. At the same time, the majority acknowledged that bygone “bills of peace” would “adjudicate the rights of members of dispersed groups without formally joining them to a lawsuit through the usual procedures.”

While Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a sharp dissent, noted bills of peace were often used to enjoin taxes when brought by individual taxpayers, Barrett said such bills were more like class actions than nationwide injunctions. And class actions, the majority explained, have various requirements delineated in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

The dissent, however, also clarified the reach of the opinion it disagreed with – mentioning, without objection, that the majority left open class actions as a way to obtain relief similar to that once provided by nationwide injunctions. So, too, did Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a concurrence.

“To be sure, in the wake of the Court’s decision, plaintiffs who challenge the legality of a new federal statute or executive action and request preliminary injunctive relief may sometimes seek to proceed by class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) and ask a court to award preliminary classwide relief that may, for example, be statewide, regionwide, or even nationwide,” Kavanaugh opined.

The CASA motions take those hints and runs.

From the filing, at length:

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion confirms that district courts may “grant or deny the functional equivalent of a universal injunction—for example, by granting or denying a preliminary injunction to a putative nationwide class under Rule 23(b)(2).” And Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion notes that “the majority leaves untouched one important tool to provide broad relief to individuals subject to lawless Government conduct: Rule 23(b)(2) class actions for injunctive relief.” Thus, “the parents of children covered by the Citizenship Order would be well advised to file promptly class-action suits and to request temporary injunctive relief for the putative class pending class certification.”

The plaintiffs insist the merits need not be relitigated because the case remains live, despite the Trump administration quickly taking it and two others like it all the way to the Supreme Court – and the district court already ruled “plaintiffs easily have met the standard for a preliminary injunction.”

All that’s left, CASA argues, is a substitution in the legal vehicle used – and, of course, how the court frames the relief it might grant.

“Consistent with the Supreme Court’s instructions, Plaintiffs have now filed an amended complaint that expressly seeks relief on behalf of a putative class of those U.S.-born babies wrongfully deemed by the Executive Order to be ineligible for U.S. citizenship, along with their parents,” the motion continues. “The Court should grant relief to this putative class and may do so before certifying the class.”

Another bit of recent jurisprudence made an appearance in the quickly filed CASA motion – from another case related to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. In one of many cases that made it to the Supreme Court over Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, the justices found lower courts can “issue temporary relief to a putative class” and a court “need not decide whether a class should be certified” before enjoining the government if the court finds the “putative class members” would otherwise suffer irreparable harm.

And that, CASA says, is in the offing now.

“Without a class-wide injunction, Defendants will deny thousands of babies in the putative class their constitutional and statutory right to United States citizenship, as well as all of the rights and privileges that citizenship entails,” the motion goes on. “Consistent with the Supreme Court’s most recent instructions, the Court can protect all members of the putative class from irreparable harm that the unlawful Executive Order threatens to inflict.”