The Justice Department filed an appeal Thursday night challenging a judge’s blockade on President Trump’s birthright-citizenship executive order.

The case now goes to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and could eventually reach the Supreme Court.

It came hours after Judge John C. Coughenour issued a preliminary injunction preventing the government from moving ahead with Mr. Trump’s order, which sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to illegal immigrants or temporary visitors.

“Citizenship by birth is an unequivocal constitutional right,” the judge wrote. “It is one of the precious principles that makes the United States the great nation that it is. The president cannot change, limit or qualify this constitutional right via an executive order.”

Mr. Trump had set his policy to take effect later this month.

Judge Coughenour had previously issued a temporary restraining order on the government, and his injunction adds more heft to the halt — but it also created an avenue for the Justice Department to appeal.

At issue is the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Mr. Trump argues that illegal immigrants and temporary visitors aren’t “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. and therefore aren’t entitled to automatic citizenship. He compared them to children of diplomats, who have long been excluded from birthright citizenship.

But Judge Coughenour said that focuses on the parents, not the children being born. He said by dint of their birth on U.S. soil they are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., so they are covered.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.