The U.S. Catholic bishops submitted a brief to the Supreme Court declaring that President Donald Trump’s ban on migration from five Muslim countries was “blatant religious discrimination”—and the lawyer representing opponents of the measure reminded the justices of that line in oral arguments held Wednesday.

Attorney Neal Katyal referred to the bishops’ strongly worded friend-of-the-court brief as Justice Samuel Alito pressed him for evidence that a “reasonable person” would view Trump’s proclamation as discriminating against Muslims.

“This is a ban that really does fall almost exclusively on Muslims,” Katyal said. “…Look at the wide variety of amicus briefs filed in this case from every corner of society, representing millions and millions of people, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which calls it, quote, ‘blatant religious discrimination’”—

He was cut off, but the point was made before a court with five Catholic justices and one Episcopalian who was raised Catholic, Neil Gorsuch. The bishops’ brief cited Trump’s anti-Muslim tweets as evidence that the president’s order “arises out of express hostility to Islam,” and violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.

“Such blatant religious discrimination is repugnant to the Catholic faith, core American values, and the United States Constitution. It poses a substantial threat to religious liberty that this Court has never tolerated before and should not tolerate now,” the brief says. “Having once borne the brunt of severe discriminatory treatment, particularly in the immigration context, the Catholic Church will not sit silent while others suffer on account of their religion.”

Much of the news coverage of the hearing took the justices’ questioning as evidence that the court’s five-member conservative majority would rule in Trump’s favor. On the face of it, the justices need to decide if the core element of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965—abolishing discriminatory national-origin quotas passed in the 1920s—is trumped by a paragraph in the same law that, if the Trump administration is right, gives the president unlimited power over who can enter the country.

Whether the religious discrimination argument will move the justices in this case remains to be seen—and it’s best not to speculate on a justice’s thinking based on his or her questions.

But however the court rules, the USCCB’s brief is important in staking out an authentic Catholic position on Islam and immigration at a time when many anti-Islam voices are able to find a platform in Catholic media and institutions. And it counters the bishops’ past failures to include discrimination against Muslims as a cause for their campaign for religious liberty, as seen in the statement “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” which was issued before the 2012 presidential election. With a few exceptions, Catholic institutions were slow to respond to the nativist strain in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the first nativist president was elected with a majority of the white Catholic vote. More recently, the USCCB released a statement in February 2017 urging Trump to fulfill his promise to protect religious liberty—but without mentioning his plans for immigration or his anti-Muslim comments……

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