RummyChick, the best way to exploit this case is to simplify the context and the point.
A. Virginia Minor claimed a right to vote on the basis of being a 14th amendment citizen.
B. The court REJECTED this argument because she fit its definition of NBC.
C. The court recognized different classes of citizens by birth, but only ONE was characterized a natural-born: all children born in the country to citizen parents.
D. The other class of citizenship by birth has doubts that must be resolved, but not for natural-born citizens. Thus, in context, natural-born means a type of citizenship that is “without doubt,” otherwise one is naturally considered to be a foreigner or alien.
E. In rejecting Virginia Minor’s 14th amendment citizenship argument, the court says that the 14th amendment does NOT define natural-born citizenship ... and this is confirmed in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark: “In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens.”
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F. The Minor decision was UNANIMOUS. There was no dissent on how the court defined NBC. The decision and NBC definition was affirmed and upheld by the SCOTUS in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (in both the majority opinion AND in the dissent). There is NO compelling legal authority that trumps this definition.
Whether persons born in the US to non-citizen parents were “citizens” was not a question before the Minor Court because Mrs. Minor was natural-born, whereas Wong Kim Ark was not. The determination of his citizenship required the 14th Amendment, whereas Mrs. Minor’s did not. It’s important to note that the Supreme Court in Minor didn’t hold that all women born in the US were citizens. Only those born to citizen parents in the US were deemed to be citizens by the Court in Minor. Those outside the natural-born citizen “class” were subject to doubt regarding US citizenship. And the Court in Minor exercised judicial restraint by avoiding that issue. Some of those doubts were resolved in favor of US citizenship for those persons not in the class of natural-born citizens in Wong Kim Ark.
“The court REJECTED this argument because she fit its definition of NBC.”
Show me the sentence that says here parents were American Citizens.
What was the question before the court?
No one disputed that she was a citizen.
The question was NOT was she a citizen under the 14th Amendment.
The question was whether the 14th Amendment gave her the right to sufferage.
The HOLDING was no suffrage through the 14th Amendment.
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