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To: Nathanael1
You are misreading the complaint.

No, not at all.

At no point from the original pleading through the Supreme Court ruling was Minor's citizenship ever questioned, nor was she ever called upon to defend it.

You need to read the whole decision. You've ignored several parts. You also need to read this thread better because I've already cited the part where the court acknowledges that Virginia Minor argued she was a citizen under the 14th amendment

The argument is, that as a woman, born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State in which she resides, she has the right of suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of her citizenship, which the State cannot by its laws or constitution abridge.

The underlined part above is the birth clause from the 14th amendment. Minor is citing this clause to establish herself as a citizen, but the court rejected it.

...in our opinion, it did not need this amendment to give them that position ...

The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men.

... the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment.

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.

Do you understand now?? The court said she was already a citizen as she met the court's definition of natural born citizen: all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens. If what you think was true, the court wouldn't have spent the first half of the decision discussing citizenship ... but it did.

307 posted on 06/24/2011 4:36:37 AM PDT by edge919
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To: edge919
I admit it's a long and complicated sentence full of dependent clauses, subordinate phrases, and the like, and easy to get lost in. So let's do a little diagramming. Here's the sentence again. This time I've bolded only the subject, main verb and object of the main verb in order to get at the main idea of the sentence:

The argument is, that as a woman, born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State in which she resides, she has the right of suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of her citizenship, which the State cannot by its laws or constitution abridge.

Note in particular the initial "as", which carries the sense of "because". From the "as" on forward, everything before the main subject "she", including the part you underlined, is part of the subordinate phrase introduced by the subordinating injunction "as". That is to say, everything from "as" to "resides", inclusive, is not part of the main sentence, but simply providing supporting information.

Let's look at the sentence again. This time I've made two small clarifying changes, and underlined the subordinate clause:

The argument is, that because a woman, born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State in which she resides, [therefore] she has the right of suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of her citizenship, which the State cannot by its laws or constitution abridge.

While it might be clarifying to recast Minor's argument syllogistically, I'll forego that at the moment, as I think it should be sufficiently clear from the above that the phrase "born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is not part of Minor's argument, it is one of its premises. The thing about premises is that their truth is assumed, not argued. That's what makes them premises.

Let's look at it another way. According to Waite, the one and only question being presented to the Court in MvH was "whether, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, a woman who is a citizen of the United States and of the State of Missouri is a voter in that state." (Notice the "who" here, indicating once again that Minor's citizenship is simply assumed, not argued.)

But note well: the issue before the Court is voting rights. And who has standing to bring a case on voting rights? Only a US citizen. If Minor's citizenship had at any time been in doubt, she would never have had standing to bring the suit in the first place. This is critical, so I'll repeat it: since the question is one involving the "privileges and immunities of citizenship", only a US citizen would have had standing to bring the case at all. The very fact that MvH made it all the way to the Supreme Court is compelling argument that Minor's citizenship had never been in doubt.

the court acknowledges that Virginia Minor argued she was a citizen under the 14th amendment

The Court acknowledges that Minor was a citizen for 14th Amendment purposes, not that "she argued she was".

315 posted on 06/24/2011 9:03:44 AM PDT by Nathanael1
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