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Trump v. Barbara · ¶224

This language, all agreed, “unambiguously overruled this Court’s contrary holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), that the Constitution did not recognize black Americans as citizens of the United States or their own State.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 807–808 (2010) (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); see also Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall., at 73. The “Citizenship Clause ‘forever closed the door on Dred Scott’ and ‘constitutionalized the Civil Rights Act of 1866’” by foreclosing a racial criterion for citizenship. Vaello Madero, 596 U. S., at 175 (THOMAS, J., concurring) (quoting K. Lash, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship 171 (2014)); see also Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall., at 73; id., at 94–95 (Field, J., dissenting).
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slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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