Catholic bishops torch Trump over affront to 'human dignity'

President Donald Trump prays during a group prayer during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 5, 2026. REUTERS/Al Drago

A major organization representing Catholic bishops has unleashed a blistering rebuke of Donald Trump, according to a new breakdown from The New Republic, submitting a "blunt and unsparing" takedown of his war on birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court.

Early on in his second term, Trump signed a highly contentious executive order calling for the end of birthright citizenship, the idea, as enshrined in the 14th Amendment, that anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen. The administration has argued that the move is intended to prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from automatically becoming citizens, while critics have torched the order as a brazenly unconstitutional assault on American identity that could be abused in untold ways.

Given that Trump's order is directly contradicted in clear, concrete language by the 14th Amendment, it was swiftly the subject of lawsuits, one of which is now before the Supreme Court. While the Court's current conservative majority has been known to side with Trump with rulings that stretched legal credibility, the unavoidable conflict with the Constitution has led many legal scholars to predict that the Court will rule against the administration, though doubts still persist.

Seeking to sway the justices' view of the case, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a group "representing the Catholic hierarchy in the United States," submitted a friend-of-the-court brief pertaining to the birthright citizenship case, excoriating Trump's order as unconstitutional, as well as an affront to morality and "human dignity."

"At its core, this case is not solely a question about citizenship status or the Fourteenth Amendment,” the bishops argued. “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."

They continued: "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. 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.”

This is the latest in a long line of friend-of-the-court briefs submitted to the Supreme Court by the USCCB, with the organization previously weighing in on cases "involving public religious schools, death-row inmates’ access to clergy, Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy, and, on the immigration front, restrictions on spousal visas." Their argument against Trump's birthright citizenship order is in keeping with a broader trend amongst Catholic leadership during Trump's second term, with Pope Leo XIV frequently calling out the administration's policies and advocating for the rights of immigrants.

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