The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. have issued an amicus brief for a Supreme Court case on birthright citizenship that will be heard on April 1, 2026. An amicus brief is information or expertise that is provided to the courts by a party that is not named in a particular case. Thus, the highest authority of the Catholic Church within the United States has issued guidance to a majority Catholic Supreme Court (six out of the nine justices currently serving are Catholic and one of the other three, Neil Gorsuch, converted from Catholicism to Episcopalism).

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The case in question – Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al., v. Barbara et al. – will examine the legality of President Trump’s Executive Order 14,160 that denies automatic citizenship to infants who are born in the United States if their parents are in the country either illegally or temporarily. Critics have cautioned that the order could leave some infants stateless.

Lower courts have repeatedly ruled against the administration, highlighting what they consider to be the order’s violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The 14^th Amendment states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Trump v. Barbara was first filed in the District Court of New Hampshire by a woman identified only as Barbara. In her declaration, Barbara said that she is a Honduran citizen who has lived in the United States since 2024 with her husband and three children. The family has pending asylum applications due to their persecution by the Mara 18 gang. Since coming to America, they have “built a life here,” attend a local church, go to school, and live near family. When Barbara discovered that she was pregnant in February of 2025, she was distressed because she understood Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship would deny citizenship to her unborn child. She said:

I am fearful for my child’s future in light of this executive order. My baby has the right to citizenship and a future in the United States. I want my baby to have access to opportunities, such as access to education and permission to work legally, in order to make a life for themselves. I also want my child to be safe. I do not want my child to live in fear and hiding. I do not want my child to be a target for immigration enforcement. I am not sure how my child would be added to my asylum application. This would affect the future of us as a family. I fear our family could be at risk of separation. I also do not want my child to have to move to Honduras.

Barbara said that she believes “it is important to help families like ours” and so she agreed to be a representative plaintiff in the case – meaning that the decision in her case would be applied to other families in similar positions – despite her fear that she could face retaliation for her participation in the lawsuit:

I am scared about my identity and participation in this lawsuit being made public because I fear for my and my family’s safety. I fear that certain individuals would retaliate against us because of my participation in the lawsuit. I have heard about the current Administration or supporters retaliating against people who sue or speak out against the Administration.

The lawsuit was filed on Barbara’s behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and partners and represents the “enormous number of individuals whose citizenship hangs in the balance because of the President’s birthright citizenship executive order.” It argues that the order violates past case law and the unambiguous language of the 14^th Amendment. ACLU national legal director, Cecillia Wang stated,

No president can change the 14^th Amendment’s fundamental promise of citizenship. For over 150 years, it has been the law and our national tradition that everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen from birth. The federal courts have unanimously held that President Trump’s executive order is contrary to the Constitution, a Supreme Court decision from 1898, and a law enacted by Congress.

In contrast, the Trump administration argues that the amendment was passed to ensure the right of citizenship to slaves and should not be broadly applied. They further argue that newborns whose parents are temporary or illegal residents in the United States “owe primary allegiance” to their parent’s countries and are therefore not “completely subject” to the U.S. jurisdiction that is specified in the 14^th Amendment.

WHAT THE BRIEF SAYS

The USCCB explained that they are submitting this brief because the lawsuit touches on “central Catholic tenets.” For their part, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., which was established by the USCCB in 1988, explained that their organization works directly with families “for whom birthright citizenship is not an abstract constitutional principle, but a foundational safeguard of legal status, family unity, and equal participation in civil life.” Consequently, they expressed concern that:

Any effort to narrow or depart from the settled understanding of birthright citizenship would introduce widespread uncertainty, destabilize families, and undermine uniform national rules.

This explanation of the brief’s motivation is important because it provides a context for the Catholic Church’s choice to defend birthright citizenship in this case even though such laws are not commonplace in much of Europe and do not exist in the Vatican (given the unique situation of the Vatican, it would be very unlikely that a child would be born within its boundaries; in fact, no child has been born in the Vatican since its founding in 1929). The concerns of American Catholic leadership are centered around the real-life consequences that Executive Order 14,160 would have because of what the law has previously been and the abrupt change that the executive order would initiate.

The brief says that the executive order would have “immoral” intentional and unintentional consequences that would contradict Catholic beliefs and teachings about human dignity, care for the vulnerable, and family unity. In contrast, it suggests that the current birthright citizenship law aligns with the Church teachings that all humans share equal dignity, are created to be social beings, and are owed protection by those in authority purely because of their humanity.

The first argument that is offered against the executive order is that it would “undermine both the legal and moral foundations of American society by failing to respect the equal dignity of every human person.” The brief notes that the 14^th Amendment was enacted as a remedy to the racial injustice that the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision – which denied citizenship to Black Americans – enshrined into law. The brief refers to the Dred Scott decision as “one of the most infamous decisions in U.S. history” and suggests that it was explicitly rejected by the adoption of the 14^th Amendment:

By granting citizenship in the simple and objective fact of birth within the community, the Constitution affirmed that membership in the political order 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 second argument that the brief provides states that, while nations have a legitimate right to regulate immigration, that right is inseparable from their duty to protect the God-given dignity of every human person. Citing the Catechism and Rerum Novarum, the brief explains the Catholic position that political authority derives from God’s authority and, thus, must be exercised to protect human dignity and to promote justice – especially for the most vulnerable. The writers also affirm that birth is a sufficient means of obtaining the legal protection of the state and recognition as a part of the community. Although it is not stated explicitly in the brief, it is a short step from this argument to prolife arguments that establish the human rights of an individual based on conception (creation) alone.

Next, the brief addresses the concept of subsidiarity. It explains that, while generally understood as the principle that the smallest, most local authority possible should manage an issue, subsidiarity also incorporates the idea that authorities and social organizations must “adopt attitudes of help” by working to protect human dignity and support human flourishing. Consequently, authority must be oriented towards the person as a social being, rather than exercise power for its own sake. An essential aspect of this is that protecting an individual’s ability to fully experience their human dignity involves defending their participation in society since, “it is not good for man to be alone” and every person has a right to contribute to society simply by virtue of their being human. Birthright citizenship protects this right for children who are born in the United States.

The brief then suggests that, to deny citizenship to infants who are born in the U.S. is immoral because it withholds the legal protection that citizenship bestows from a particular group of people, while continuing to provide this protection to others. It notes that citizenship facilitates an individual’s access to the means of integral human development:

…leading a ‘life truly human’ requires more than food and clothing – it requires freedom and agency, including the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one’s own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom even in matters religious. (Quote expands on the words of Gaudium et Spes)

The writers of the brief testify that, while the Church is called to give preferential care to the poor and vulnerable – regardless of national borders and geopolitical factors – the executive order in question would do actual harm to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. They state that the order would impose unauthorized status on 2.7 million additional people by the year 2045. Additionally, it would increase the risk of statelessness because some infants would be ineligible for citizenship in their parents’ nations of origin and in the U.S.

Citizenship plays an essential role in ensuring access to all the requirements of a truly human life. It also confers the freedom to participate in religious activities without the fear of facing penalties related to legal status. This is not just a theoretical arguement: the brief states that the fear that recent immigration enforcement activities has already instilled in immigrant communities has had a chilling effect on their religious participation. In fact, five U.S. bishops have responded to immigrants’ fears of leaving their homes to attend Mass by giving them dispensations for their Sunday obligations. Moreover, many immigrants are afraid to access the social programs that the Church provides and to attend their Catholic schools. This has impacted the Church’s ability to minister to these communities. The writers of the brief state that, by increasing the number of individuals with unauthorized and stateless status, eliminating birthright citizenship would have the collateral consequence of undermining the Church’s work with mothers and children – work that is essential to its witness to the sanctity of human life.

Were children to be made stateless at birth, they would be faced with what the brief calls, “an impossible decision” between:

…forever being an underclass citizen with limited access to the necessities of life, such as healthcare, education, housing, and the right to vote, or being forced to migrate to a country that they have never known and in which they may not be welcome.

This would be a “punishment” that has been determined to be “cruel and unusual” for those who have been proven guilty of desertion during times of war, yet, Trump’s executive order would inflict it on infants who are guilty only of the crime of being born in a place that was not of their choosing.

Finally, the brief notes that the Church considers the family to be the “foundational unit of society” and that it is the right and responsibility of parents to provide their children with religious and moral formation through their words and examples. This necessitates their physical presence with their children. However, the consequences of the executive order would “directly interfere with the parental vocation” due to the risk of family separations and barriers to reunification. Indeed, the brief foresees that in some cases, nuclear families may not have a single country that is willing to accept all its members as legal residents.

Conclusion

While perhaps weakened by the fact that the Church has not, to this writer’s knowledge, advocated for birthright citizenship more globally, the arguments in the brief are a compelling defense of the vulnerable, leaning heavily on the human dignity of the person. In fact, the brief concludes:

At its core, this case is not solely a question about citizenship status or the Fourteenth Amendment. It is a question of whether the law will affirm or deny the equal worth of those born within our common community – whether the law will protect the dignity of all God’s children.

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Image: “The Supreme Court” (CC BY 2.0) by eviltomthai