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He seems to be defending Washington’s opinion in Corfield v. Coryell, an opinion that Judge Robert Bork called “a singularly confused opinion in 1823 by a single Justice of the Supreme Court setting out his ideas of what the original privileges and immunities clause of article IV of the Constitution meant”

What Robert Bork thinks of Corfield does not matter in interpreting the original meaning of the 14th Amendment. What matters is what the framers of the 14th thought of Corfield. As Thomas points out in Saenz v Roe =>

Justice Washington’s opinion in Corfield indisputably influenced the Members of Congress who enacted the Fourteenth Amendment. When Congress gathered to debate the Fourteenth Amendment, members frequently, if not as a matter of course, appealed to Corfield, arguing that the Amendment was necessary to guarantee the fundamental rights that Justice Washington identified in his opinion.

I get your point, but I disagree with Thomas' conclusion. The scope of the three amendments were specifically limited to targeting former slaves, even though the 14A was famously hastily and badly-written. Slaughterhouse nailed it as Bork said.

Was it the purpose of the fourteenth amendment, by the simple declaration that no State should make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights which we have mentioned, from the States to the Federal government? And where it is declared that Congress Shall have the power to enforce that article, was it intended to bring within the power of Congress the entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the States?

…these consequences are so serious, so far-reaching and pervading, so great a departure from the structure and spirit of our institutions; when the effect is to fetter and degrade the State governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress in the exercise of powers heretofore universally conceded to them of the most ordinary and fundamental character; when, in fact, it radically changes the whole theory of the relations of the State and Federal governments to each other and of both these governments to the people…(Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 67, 69).