An incoherent USCCB intervention on birthright citizenship

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 27, 2026

In the amicus brief urging the US Supreme Court to restore the “birthright citizenship” policy that was ended by a Trump executive order, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) argues that the key consideration is “whether the law will protect the human dignity of all God’s children.”

So is birthright citizenship—that is, the longstanding American policy offering citizenship to anyone born on US soil—an absolute requirement for human dignity? If birthright citizenship is a fundamental human right, why has it not been recognized by most other nations? Why is it not accepted in Vatican City?

True, Vatican City is an unusual nation-state, with special legal status. But if this is a fundamental human right, it should apply everywhere. And if it is not a fundamental human right, why are the US bishops presuming to speak on this highly charged political issue—going so far as to proclaim (as one section heading of the brief asserts) that Trump’s executive order is “immoral”?

Valid arguments can be made for and against birthright citizenship. But to frame the argument in starkly moral terms, suggesting that the tradition of Catholic social teaching weighs against any such restriction on legal citizenship, is more than presumptuous; it is incoherent.

The policy of birthright citizenship is based on the 14th Amendment to the US Constition, which stipulates: “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.” Originally intended to ensure that freed slaves would not be denied citizenship, that clause became an important facet of the extraordinary welcome that the US extended to migrants for many decades.

However, there have always been exceptions to the birthright-citizenship policy. Children born to foreign diplomats residing in the US are not included, since their families are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US. Children born to members of an invading army could not claim citizenship, for the same reason. President Trump pressed the argument—debatable, but certainly not unreasonable—that the privilege of citizenship should not automatically be extended to immigrants living in the US illegally.

“Children do nothing wrong by being born in the United States,” the USCCB brief asserts. Yes, but the children’s parents did something wrong, if they refused to respect the country’s laws. “Depriving an innocent child of his citizenship based upon his parents’ immigration status would be an especially outrageous punishment,” the brief continues. But wait. Is the US punishing the people of France or Ecuador or Nepal by refusing to recognize them as citizens? We welcome visitors from those countries (assuming that they come here legally), but do not allow them to vote. Is that a punishment?

The charge that Trump’s order is depriving children of citizenship assumes that citizenship was owed to them—which is the issue in dispute. The Catholic Church has never taught that citizenship is a natural, God-given right. On the contrary, the Catholic tradition has recognized that states have the authority to set standards for citizenship. But the USCCB brief comes close to arguing that everyone has an inherent right to citizenship—and further, that Catholic social teaching demands this conclusion. Thus:

The Executive 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.

By that logic, no nation can justly deny full citizenship to anyone born in that country. “Birthright citizenship,” the brief contends, “accords with the Church’s teachings concerning the State’s obligation to uphold and protect human dignity because it treats birth within a community as a sufficient and objective basis for political belonging.” Yet as I mentioned above, most nations do not allow for such birthright citizenship. If the USCCB brief is on target, why have Church leaders in other countries never demanded a policy of birthright citizenship?

The USCCB has discovered this previously unknown aspect of Catholic social teaching at a time when the immigration issue is being hotly debated in the US, with faithful Catholics on both sides of the contentious issue. Bishops have the duty to speak on moral issues, and both the Scriptures and the Church’s moral traditions offer ample support for the proposition that the state should treat immigrants with justice and charity. But nothing in either Scripture or Tradition suggests that birthright citizenship is a natural right. So the bishops are once again trespassing in the proper realm of the Catholic laity, whose role it is to apply moral principles to the prudential questions of political life.

By the way, the “counsel of record” presenting the USCCB brief was Matthew Martens, who heads the “Securities Litigation and Enforcement Practice Group” at the Washington firm of WilmerHale. He is a member of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church.