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To: Mr Rogers
The Minor case did NOT deal with who is a citizen. It dealt with the question of who had the right to vote.

It made a passing reference to citizenship:

Ummmm, no. Citizenship was pivotal to Virginia Minor's argument. She claimed that by being a 14th amendment citizen, she had a protected right to vote via the 14th amendment. Justice Waite rejected her claim because he said her citizenship (and that of women as a class) was not due to the 14th amendment because she was a natural born citizen. We've been over this several times.

198 posted on 06/22/2011 1:01:38 PM PDT by edge919
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To: edge919

You may have been over it, but you have blinded yourself to what they said. She argued that as a citizen, the equal protection clause meant she could not be denied the right to vote. The court found:

“1. The word “citizen” is often used to convey the idea of membership in a nation.

2. In that sense, women, of born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States, have always been considered citizens of the United States, as much so before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution as since.

3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had.

4. At the time of the adoption of that amendment, suffrage was not coextensive with the citizenship of the States; nor was it at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.

5. Neither the Constitution nor the fourteenth amendment made all citizens voters.

6. A provision in a State constitution which confines the right of voting to “male citizens of the United States,” is no violation of the Federal Constitution. In such a State women have no right to vote.”

Other quotes:

“But if more is necessary to show that women have always been considered as citizens the same as men, abundant proof is to be found in the legislative and judicial history of the country...

Other proof of like character might be found, but certainly more cannot be necessary to establish the fact that sex has never been made one of the elements of citizenship in the United States. In this respect men have never had an advantage over women. The same laws precisely apply to both. The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment. She has always been a citizen from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State, of which she is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; but it did not confer citizenship on her...

The Constitution does not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. For that definition we must look elsewhere. In this case we need not determine what they are, but only whether suffrage is necessarily one of them...

As has been seen, all the citizens of the States were not invested with the right of suffrage. In all, save perhaps New Jersey, this right was only bestowed upon men and not upon all of them. Under these circumstances it is certainly now too late to contend that a government is not republican, within the meaning of this guaranty in the Constitution, because women are not made voters.”

Her citizenship was not the question. Her right to vote under the 14th’s protection of equal rights was.

As for being a NBC, the court said there was no doubt about it. If she had an alien parent, THEN they would have needed to determine if NBC applied to those born with alien parents - but she did not have an alien parent.


200 posted on 06/22/2011 1:43:48 PM PDT by Mr Rogers (Poor history is better than good fiction, and anything with lots of horses is better still)
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