The Supreme Court takes on birthright citizenship

New Republic -     Many of the high court’s cases are about arcane legal doctrines or complex federal statutes. Real-world effects can sometimes be difficult to discern through the time-consuming labyrinth of appellate review. Rarely does the court decide anything that immediately changes everything.

The birthright citizenship case is different. It is both more real and less abstract than any other case on the court’s docket, save perhaps for those involving capital punishment. It is about whether the president of the United States can denaturalize millions of U.S. citizens at a whim, deprive them of the Constitution’s full protections, and then subject them to deportation from the country where they were born—indeed, from the only country they have ever known.....

The Constitution says, quite emphatically, no. The Fourteenth Amendment says this in no uncertain terms: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” There is no hidden meaning to uncover here. When you are within America’s borders, you are subject to its jurisdiction. You have to pay U.S. taxes. You must abide by U.S. rules and regulations. You can be charged by U.S. officials for committing crimes. You can be sued in U.S. courts under the common law.

Earlier this month, the last wave of briefs were filed in the case ahead of oral arguments on, perhaps appropiately, April 1. Some of them are more notable than others....But perhaps the most powerful one comes from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the organization representing the Catholic hierarchy in the United States.

The USCCB is a frequent flier at the Supreme Court. Like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Civil Liberties Union, it often submits friend-of-the-court briefs for the justices to consider in major cases. The bishops’ interests are wide-ranging: Recent cases that have drawn the USCCB’s attention are ones 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.

None of those briefs is as blunt and unsparing as the one submitted in Barbara. While the bishops make some legal arguments, they are ultimately secondary to the moral and spiritual ones contained in the text. “At its core, this case is not solely a question about citizenship status or the Fourteenth Amendment,” they 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.”