Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-303_6khn.pdf
Page Number: 15

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

7 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

late 1850s, the connection was well established.  For exam-
ple, even Chief Justice Taney in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 
How.  393  (1857),  demonstrated  this  connection  when  dis-
cussing why, erroneously in my view, free blacks were “not 
intended to be included . . . under the word ‘citizens’ in the 
Constitution,” and therefore could “claim none of the rights
and privileges which that instrument provides for and se-
cures to citizens of the United States.”  Id., at 404.  Accord-
ing to Taney, free blacks were at the founding “considered 
as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been 
subjugated  by  the  dominant  race,  and,  whether  emanci-
pated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and
had no rights or privileges but such as those who held power 
and the Government might choose to grant them.”  Id., at 
404–405. 

He  reached  that  conclusion  after  surveying  discrimina-
tory  state  laws  and  finding  it  “hardly  consistent  with  the
respect due to these States, to suppose that they regarded
at that time, as fellow-citizens and members of the sover-
eignty,  a  class  of  beings  whom  they  had  thus  stigmatized 
. . . and upon whom they had impressed such deep and en-
during marks of inferiority and degradation.”  Id., at 416. 
Under  the  Comity  Clause  of  Article  IV,  moreover,  States 
could not place “citizens” of the United States “in an inferior 
grade.”  Id.,  at  423.  Because  it  was  long  assumed  that
blacks could be placed in such an “inferior grade,” how then 
could they be citizens?  For Taney, then, States’ longstand-
ing  and  widespread  practice  of  denying  free  blacks  equal 
civil rights conclusively showed that blacks were not “citi-
zens” entitled to various constitutional protections, such as
the right to sue in federal court. 

Senator  Stephen  Douglas,  defending  Dred  Scott  a  few 
months later in Springfield, Illinois, expressed the converse
of Taney’s reasoning.  He asked his audience, “What is the 
object of making [Dred Scott] a citizen?” and answered, “Of
course to give him the rights, privileges and immunities of