Trump v. Barbara · ¶447

After the Civil War, Congress faced enormous challenges, and one of these was ensuring that all black Americans, both the newly freed slaves and those who were free before the war, would be treated as citizens of the United States and of the States in which they lived. Congress addressed that issue in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then again in the Fourteenth Amendment. For the first time in the Nation’s history, these enactments provided a national rule on citizenship, and the meaning of that rule is the question that the Court now addresses.

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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