Trump v. Barbara · ¶121

That contention is ahistorical for the reasons laid out in Part I, supra, and those explained in the Court’s opinion. In my view, it is also difficult to square with the notion of a “color-blind” Constitution, which has loomed large in the Court’s Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence. The Court’s conception of a color-blind Constitution and the Government’s (and principal dissent’s) cramped, group-specific reading of the Citizenship Clause are two sides of the same coin, stemming from a basic misunderstanding of the relevant history. As I have shown in this opinion, the Fourteenth Amendment is not color-blind; rather, its core principle is that our Nation does not tolerate racial caste—i.e., the systemic subordination that many (even some who opposed slavery) had wished to perpetuate after the Civil War. So, the architects of the Second Founding did not think or pretend that race didn’t…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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