At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.
Virginia Minor herself had citizen parents, so answering the question of the children of aliens was not necessary to decide this case. The Court explained:
For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.
As the court was not ruling on her citizenship status only confirming it for purposes of determining her eligibility to vote, as they conceded that she was a citizen, what the court stated regarding citizenship was a dictum.
Dictum:
In United States legal terminology, a dictum (plural dicta) is a statement of opinion or belief considered authoritative though not binding, because of the authority of the person making it.
There are multiple subtypes of dicta, although due to their overlapping nature, legal practitioners in the U.S. colloquially use dicta to refer to any statement by a court that extends beyond the issue before the court. Dicta in this sense are not binding under the principle of stare decisis, but tend to have a strong persuasive effect, either by being in an authoritative decision, stated by an authoritative judge, or both. These subtypes include:
dictum proprium: A personal or individual dictum that is given by the judge who delivers an opinion but that is not necessarily concurred in by the whole court and is not essential to the disposition.
gratis dictum: an assertion that a person makes without being obligated to do so, or also a court's discussion of points or questions not raised by the record or its suggestion of rules not applicable in the case at bar.
judicial dictum: an opinion by a court on a question that is directly involved, briefed, and argued by counsel, and even passed on by the court, but that is not essential to the decision.
obiter dictum in Latin means "something said in passing" and is a comment made while delivering a judicial opinion, but it is unnecessary to the decision in the case and therefore not precedential (although it may be considered persuasive).
simplex dictum: an unproved or dogmatic statement.
In English law, a dictum is any statement made as part of a judgment of a court. Thus the term includes dicta merely in passing (referred to as obiter dicta) that are not a necessary part of the reason for the court's decision (referred to as the ratio decidendi). English lawyers do not, as a rule, categorise dicta more finely than into those that are obiter and those that are not.
Whether persons born in the US to non-citizen parents were “citizens” was not a question before the Minor Court because Mrs. Minor was unquestionably born in the US to US citizen parents, whereas Wong Kim Ark was not. The determination of his citizenship required the 14th Amendment, whereas Mrs. Minor’s did not.
The dictum stated in Minor v Happersett regarding citizenship is and never was a binding opinion and in fact the whole ruling was made moot with passage of the 19th Amendment.
In a nutshell what the SCOTUS said in Minor v Happersett was, yes she’s a citizen without question, and on a side note (dictum), there is some question regarding whether persons born in the United States to non-citizen parents are natives or natural-born citizens but we are not discussing or ruling on that as it has no relevance in this case. The court in Minor v Happersett never answered the question as to whether the law included as native or natural born citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents, they only mentioned it in passing that they were among some legal authorities, questions regarding that opinion.
As they did not make a ruling as to the citizenship status of those born in the US to non-citizen parents, the dictum, the dictum did not even have any persuasive effect as to future cases as they never made a ruling on that issue – only mentioned that it might be in question.
Well, no, that's not what the court is saying. The court did answer the question of the children of aliens in the following paragraphs because the question, as the court understood it, was for more than just Virginia Minor. Read and learn:
The direct question is, therefore, presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters.
See the part where it says "all citizens"??? This is why the court considered the wives and children of aliens in these paragraphs:
Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization Congress, as early as 1790, provided "that any alien, being a free white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be considered citizens of the United States ....And here:
As early as 1804 it was enacted by Congress that when any alien who had declared his intention to become a citizen in the manner provided by law died before he was actually naturalized, his widow and children should be considered as citizens of the United States, and entitled to all rights and privileges as such upon taking the necessary oath; [n10] and in 1855 it was further provided that any woman who might lawfully be naturalized under the existing laws, married, or [p169] who should be married to a citizen of the United States, should be deemed and taken to be a citizen. [n11]
From this it is apparent that from the commencement of the legislation upon this subject alien women and alien minors could be made citizens by naturalization, ...
Now, the other part you ignore is that the Minor's citizenship status was a part of the holding. Minor made an argument based on the 14th amendment, which the court unanimously rejected:
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 ...
The part underlined above is the citizen clause of the 14th amendment. Read how the court responds to Minor's argument:
in our opinion, it did not need this amendment to give them that position. Before its adoption the Constitution of the United States did not in terms prescribe who should be citizens of the United States or of the several States, yet there were necessarily such citizens without such provision.
The court deliberately used the NBC clause from Article II to reject Minor's 14th amendment argument. They didn't need to solve the doubts about citizenship of children born without reference to the citizenship of the parents for Minor, but they did solve those doubts anyway, by citing the passages I mentioned above. The most important part of this case, however, is that the court clearly showed that natural-born citizens did NOT need the 14th amendment to be citizens.
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.
What's noteworthy is that the court didn't address this issue simply about Virginia Minor but to women as a class. The court unanimously held that women did not have a right to vote, but as their citizenship was defined, they did have a right to run for president ... except for those who rely on the 14th amendment to be citizens, which is what we learned in the Wong Kim Ark decision. That latter decision affirms that Minor's citizenship is part of the holding, and not just dicta.
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, ...
Virginia Minor did NOT argue she was a citizen through her parents, nor did the Minor court say that she was born of citizen parents, but the Ark court DID say she was born of citizen parents. Why would they do this??