Trump v. Barbara · ¶108

The Civil Rights Act of 1866—the predecessor to the Citizenship Clause, see ante, at 8–9—was initially drafted as a spot treatment. Senator Lyman Trumbull’s first proposal homed in on the freedmen and provided merely that “all persons of African descent born in the United States are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.” If that language had prevailed, the view JUSTICE THOMAS asserts today might be well founded. See post, at 4–5 (finding birthright citizenship’s “feudal” origins inconsistent with Congress’s focus on “secur[ing] equal rights for the freed blacks”).

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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