Revoking Birthright Citizenship is Immoral
Published on: May 5, 2026
By: Thomas E. Dwyer
Editor’s Note: The Friend of the Court (Amici Curiae) Brief filed by the US Catholic Church in the Birthright Citizenship case (Trump v. Barbara) currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court skillfully weaves together Scriptures, Catholic Social Teaching, law, and Western tradition to argue that great harm would fall to society were the Court to determine that birthright citizenship is no longer a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Brief argues that ending birthright citizenship would:
- Deny the Innate Dignity and Freedom of the Person
- Inflict Harm on Vulnerable People
- Weaken and Threaten the Family
Key parts of the Brief are below. The full Brief, 29 pages long, can be found here. It was filed by U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
See also a related The Weekly Word essay by Rev. Dr. Craig Phillips (April 7, 2026) on the emerging worldwide problem of stateless people (refugees) where he comments on “what faith traditions know that states have forgotten.”
Revoking Birthright Citizenship is Immoral
The following passages from the Brief were selected and edited by Tom Dwyer
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT:
WESTERN TRADITION, THE CONSTITUTION, AND THE TEACHINGS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SUPPORT BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP BECAUSE IT RECOGNIZES THE EQUAL DIGNITY OF EVERY HUMAN PERSON
The Western tradition of birthright citizenship stems from the Roman law of jus soli, or citizenship by place of birth. As early as 1608, courts of England declared that birth in a territory was sufficient to establish citizenship therein…
The Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause was adopted to rectify the horrors of the [the 1857 Supreme Court] decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford,[i] and thus to ensure citizenship for everyone born in the United States, regardless of race. In Dred Scott, the Court had held that Black people, due to their race, could never be citizens of this country, thus effectively and retroactively adopting a test of inherited citizenship, or jus sanguinis, in the United States for Black persons…
While the Church recognizes the legitimate authority of sovereign nations to regulate immigration and secure their borders, the Church also teaches that this authority includes a corresponding duty to protect the God-given dignity of every human person…[ii]
The Church also teaches that political authority is a sharing in the authority of God…[iii]
Birthright citizenship 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.[iv] The Church teaches that equal human dignity is inherent in the mere fact of personhood and does not depend on citizenship, immigration status, or parentage.[v]
By recognizing children as members of a particular political community, birthright citizenship acknowledges the intrinsic value of every human person.[vi] In this way, it embodies the Church’s teaching that public authorities must, to be morally legitimate, affirm and protect human dignity.[vii]
To be human is to be a social being, as seen, for example, in God’s creative observation that it was not good that the man he had created in his image should be alone.[viii] Thus, the Church emphasizes that human dignity is recognized and expressed in human society…[ix]
Birthright citizenship is consonant with this view. By recognizing citizenship at the place of someone’s birth, the state justly acknowledges that a child is already embedded in a community—family, neighborhood, parish, and school—and empowers the child to participate in that community.[x] Birthright citizenship thus allows individuals and families to participate in communal, social, and political life, while the government acts as a protector of the agency and freedom that subsidiarity aims to safeguard.[xi]
I. THE EXECUTIVE ORDER IS IMMORAL
A. Ending Birthright Citizenship Denies the Innate Dignity and Freedom of the Person
…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. The Church acknowledges that 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.”[xii] When a person is excluded from the legal and political structures that govern his life, he or she is prevented from exercising agency and participating in community, to his or her detriment and that of the nation…[xii]
B. Ending Birthright Citizenship Inflicts Harm On Vulnerable People
Scripture tells us that the truest measure of morality lies in how the most vulnerable amongst us are treated.[xiv] The Bible calls us to give special care to vulnerable people, including migrants and children, both of whom are affected by this Executive Order…[xv]
It is critical that we treat our suffering neighbors not with indifference, apathy, or bias, but instead with the same type of mercy as depicted in the story of the Good Samaritan, whose love transcended the most strident ethnic division of that day.[xvi].
Christ’s very point in framing a Samaritan as that story’s hero was to emphasize that our obligation to love our neighbors who are suffering is not bounded by regional or cultural borders. As Saint Augustine of Hippo put it, “[a]ll men are to be loved equally,” and we are to “pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with [us].”[xvii]
The Executive Order forsakes the vulnerable among us—specifically the children of migrants, who, by matters of time, place, and circumstance beyond their control, are brought into closer connection with us— because it subjects them to further danger related to their lack of legal status: statelessness. Specifically, the Executive Order would, by 2045, increase by as many as 2.7 million the number of unauthorized residents in the United States and at the same time increase the risk that some people will be stateless…
Statelessness occurs when people are not recognized as nationals by any country under the operation of its laws.[xviii] Stateless people lack access to basic services necessary for integration into society, such as education, employment, health care, documentation, and financial support.[xix] And stateless people are at increased risk of social and economic marginalization.[xx] They experience significant social exclusion, and their lack of legal status makes them heightened targets for violence, human trafficking, forced displacement, and labor exploitation.[xxi]
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.[xxii] And in the case of children born to undocumented immigrants, they will be faced with an impossible decision: 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…[xxiii]
C. Ending Birthright Citizenship Weakens and Threatens The Family
…Because the family is the foundational unit of society—the “original cell of social life”—Catholic teaching consistently rejects state actions that undermine family integrity.[xi] Rather, the Church insists that public authorities have a “grave duty” to “honor the family.”[xii] The Church opposes government actions that weaken or supplant the family rather than supporting it. Governments must help families “contribute more effectively to social well-being and supplement their activity when the demands of justice exceed their capacities.”[xiii].
As noted above, denying citizenship to children born in the United States places them at risk of being stateless. That statelessness places families at risk of separation and creates challenges for family reunification. Indeed, families removed from the United States with stateless children may not have a single country willing to receive them. And families whose individual members are removed may not have a single country in which they can reunite.
CONCLUSION
Ending birthright citizenship lacks historical, legal, and moral support. The principle of citizenship by birth is firmly rooted in Western legal tradition, enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment, and reaffirmed by this Court’s precedent. It is equally grounded in Church teachings, which affirms the inherent dignity of every human person, especially the innocent child. As Catholics, our faith compels us to protest laws that deny the dignity of the human person and harm innocent children, particularly when such laws resurrect the very injustices the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to repudiate.
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 human dignity of all God’s children.
For these reasons, [the Church]respectfully urge[s] the Court to reject the Executive Order and uphold the enduring constitutional and moral commitment to equal dignity for all persons born in the United States.
Tom Dwyer is the President and Executive Director of A Faith That Does Justice. He writes and speaks frequently about the imperatives of faith-filled social justice in building the common good and guiding our responses to political questions.
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