# John Coughenour John C. Coughenour is a **Senior U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Washington**, in Seattle. Nominated by President **[[Ronald Reagan]]** on August 11, 1981 and confirmed by the Senate on September 25, 1981, he had been on the federal bench for over four decades when he became **the first judge in the country to block [[Executive Order 14160]]**, Trump's Day-One order attempting to end birthright citizenship. Coughenour matters for the KB as **the Reagan-appointee face of the judicial resistance to the [[Birthright Citizenship Attack]]** — his "blatantly unconstitutional" ruling from the bench set the tone for the litigation that ultimately reached the Supreme Court as [[Trump v. Barbara]] (2026). That a conservative senior judge with a 40-year record reacted to the order with such blunt dismissal is itself a data point about how far outside the legal mainstream the birthright-citizenship theory sits. ## The birthright-citizenship ruling On **January 23, 2025**, three days after [[Executive Order 14160]] was signed, Coughenour granted a temporary restraining order blocking it in a suit brought by the states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon. From the bench he told the Justice Department attorney, "This is a blatantly unconstitutional order," adding that in over four decades he could not remember a case in which the question presented was as clear. It was the first of the multiple district-court injunctions — in Washington, Maryland, Massachusetts, and California — that froze the order and led to the merits litigation in [[Trump v. Barbara]]. ## See Also - [[Trump v. Barbara]] — the Supreme Court case his ruling helped set in motion - [[Executive Order 14160]] — the order he was the first to block - [[John Coughenour - blatantly unconstitutional]] — the quote receipt - [[Birthright Citizenship Attack]] — the broader project his ruling checked