U.S. Bishops Take On Trump At the Supreme Court: “Protect God-Given Human Dignity”
The U.S. bishops have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court calling Trump’s birthright citizenship order “immoral” and unconstitutional — a consequential legal action without recent parallel.
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On Thursday, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network filed a historic amicus brief with the Supreme Court, urging the justices to strike down President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.
The brief argues that the order is “antithetical to the import of the Church’s teachings” because “it deprives people whose parents were not born here, or whose mother has temporary status, of the legal rights necessary to participate in the society of their birth.” It calls on the Court to “protect God-given human dignity.”
The bishops wrote that “ending birthright citizenship denies the innate dignity and freedom of the person.”
They added: “Children do nothing wrong by being born in the United States. Yet, this Executive Order renders them stateless. Depriving an innocent child of his citizenship based upon his parents’ immigration status would be an especially outrageous punishment — one that this Court has rejected as punishment even for people who have been proven guilty.”
The brief also expressed concern over a “climate of fear and anxiety” and condemned the “vilification of immigrants” in current political rhetoric. Its conclusion was unequivocal: “Ending birthright citizenship lacks historical, legal, and moral support.” The bishops urged the Court to “uphold the enduring constitutional and moral commitment to equal dignity for all persons born in the United States.”
The filing represents the organized body of Catholic bishops in the United States, formally telling the Supreme Court that the president is acting immorally.
It is a legal filing, not a pastoral letter — submitted to the nine justices who will decide the constitutional future of citizenship in America.
And it did not come out of nowhere.
A Year in the Making
The brief is the culmination of an escalating confrontation between the American Catholic hierarchy and the Trump White House over the past twelve months.
