Trump v. Barbara · ¶246

Congress understood the Citizenship Clause to exclude the children of temporary visitors. Just two years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Congress passed the Enforcement Act of 1870. The Act implemented the Citizenship Clause with the same language that the Civil Rights Act had used, limiting the right to citizenship to persons born here and “not subject to any foreign power.” Enforcement Act of 1870, §18, 16 Stat. 144 (reenacting Act of Apr. 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27). The 1870 Act thus incorporated language that expressly excluded the children of temporary foreign visitors, who were subject to the power of the foreign countries in which they were domiciled. See Part I–B–2, supra. If the Citizenship Clause included the children of temporary visitors—who clearly fall outside the reach of the Enforcement Act—then the Reconstruction Congress would have violated its own Citizenship…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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