Trump v. Barbara · ¶353
The Court’s account does not make sense. To begin, the postratification evidence against the Court’s view begins not “nearly two decades after the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification,” but immediately. Ante, at 13. Well before the Court has any explanation for a departure from its view, all three branches of the Federal Government had already rejected it. In 1870, Congress interpreted the Citizenship Clause to require that a child born here be “not subject to any foreign power.” See 16 Stat. 144 (reenacting Act of Apr. 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27). In 1873, the Supreme Court interpreted the Citizenship Clause to “exclude from its operation children of . . . citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall., at 72–73. And, the same year, President Grant’s Attorney General interpreted the Citizenship Clause to exclude the children of…Read in context ›
slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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