The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) filed an amicus brief Feb. 26 with the Supreme Court, calling President Donald Trump's executive order restricting birthright citizenship "immoral" and unconstitutional and suggesting justices should reject it to defend "God-given human dignity."
The USCCB joined Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc (CLINIC) in filing the amicus curiae brief in the case Trump v. Barbara, a case challenging the executive order.
The order was issued shortly after Trump's inauguration in January 2025 and would halt automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. to non-citizens unless at least one parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Ending birthright citizenship, the bishops’ brief countered, “lacks historical, legal, and moral support.”
USCCB’s choice of counsel draws criticism
After filing the brief, the USCCB drew criticism for retaining a firm that is known for its Supreme Court advocacy: Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, known as WilmerHale.
WilmerHale is one of the nation’s largest and most prominent law firms. As critics pointed out, it has represented Planned Parenthood affiliates in post-Dobbs litigation defending state-level abortion protections. WilmerHale also played a role in advocating for same-sex “marriage” in the leadup to the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Some critics said the partnership raised questions about consistency in applying Catholic teaching on life issues.
CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt criticized the brief in a statement.
“Human dignity does not come from a passport or a court ruling; it comes from being created in the image of God,” Reinhardt said. “If citizenship is what affirms a child’s ‘equal worth,’ then dignity becomes a concession of the state — the same logic the abortion industry uses when it argues that rights exist only when the law recognizes them.”
“It is deeply troubling that the USCCB hired Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP — a firm that backed same-sex ‘marriage’ in Obergefell and abortion interests in Dobbs, including Planned Parenthood affiliates. That choice undercuts any serious claim to a consistent ethic of life.”
The debate
The issue of birthright citizenship remains hotly contested and unresolved as Trump’s executive order is currently on hold amid multiple legal challenges.The Supreme Court is expected to decide the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause in the coming months.
As Zeale News previously reported, Catholic Sen. Eric Schmitt argued that U.S. citizenship should be reserved as a “privilege” for those with a “permanent and lawful bond to the United States,” not granted automatically based solely on birthplace. Schmitt contended that extending citizenship to children born to tourists or those in the country illegally “has betrayed both the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the intent of its drafters,” and wrote in his brief, “In short, only aliens who have been permitted to make the United States their domicile can be ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
CatholicVote’s Vice President of Advocacy Joshua Mercer said the debate over birthright citizenship highlights a need for bishops to engage with “the fullness of Church teaching.”
“The bishops need to engage with their flock in a way that recognizes the fullness of the Church’s teaching — the dignity of migrants, but solid respect for order and for the laws governing how many can be accepted,” Mercer said. “If bishops fail to engage on the fullness of Church teaching, they run the risk of people thinking that the bishops don’t understand what’s really happening in their communities — and then they’ll just get ignored. That’s not good for anybody.”
Arguments in the brief
In Section 1A, titled “To Dismantle The Principle Of Birthright Citizenship Would Undermine Both The Legal And Moral Foundations of American Society,” the brief cited case law and argued that birthright citizenship was “not a new or even uniquely American idea,” but one that drew from the Western legal tradition of jus soli — citizenship by place of birth — rooted in ancient Roman law and affirmed in English common law as early as 1608.
The brief argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause (and later interpretations of it) merely constitutionalized a longstanding principle in the aftermath of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to black Americans. The amendment, it said, was adopted “to rectify the horrors” of that ruling and to secure citizenship for “everyone born in the United States, regardless of race.”
The brief also cited case law from the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, noting that the Court described the Citizenship Clause as affirming the “ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory.” It emphasized that the Court left little room for doubt, recognizing only narrow historical exceptions, such as children of foreign diplomats or occupying enemy forces.
Birthright citizenship, the brief argued, was therefore “neither an innovation nor an aberration, but a deeply rooted principle of the Western legal tradition — one that the United States consciously embraced and constitutionalized in the wake of grave moral and legal failure.” The brief also referenced scholarship in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities to support that claim.
By grounding citizenship in “the simple and objective fact of birth within the community,” the Constitution affirmed that membership “does not depend on race or national origin — or that of one’s parent — but rather only on being a human person born in the jurisdiction of the United States,” the brief stated.
The brief also argued that birthright citizenship reflects core Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity of every human person and contended that political authority is morally legitimate only insofar as it protects the vulnerable and promotes justice.
The brief called the executive order “immoral,” arguing that it would deny U.S.-born children the legal recognition necessary to live a “life truly human,” restrict their participation in society, and disproportionately harm migrants’ families. It warned that rescinding citizenship could increase statelessness, expose vulnerable children to severe hardship, and deepen a climate of fear already deterring Catholics from parish life and the sacraments.