Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 59

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

7 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

rights—i.e., privileges or immunities—attributable to that
status,”  the  Court  has  interpreted  the  Clause  “quite  nar-
rowly.”  McDonald, 561 U. S., at 808 (opinion of THOMAS, 
J.).  Perhaps to compensate for this limited view of the Priv-
ileges or Immunities Clause, it has incorporated individual
rights against the States through the Due Process Clause. 
Id., at 809. 

Due  process  incorporation  is  a  demonstrably  erroneous 
interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.  As I have ex-
plained before, “[t]he notion that a constitutional provision
that guarantees only ‘process’ before a person is deprived of 
life, liberty, or property could define the substance of those
rights  strains  credulity  for  even  the  most  casual  user  of 
words.”  Id., at 811.  The unreasonableness of this interpre-
tation is underscored by the Court’s struggle to find a “guid-
ing principle to distinguish ‘fundamental’ rights that war-
rant  protection  from  nonfundamental  rights  that  do  not,” 
ibid., as well as its many incorrect decisions based on this 
theory, see Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015); Roe 
v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973); Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 
How. 393 (1857).  

I “decline to apply the legal fiction” of due process incor-
poration.  Timbs  v.  Indiana,  586  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2019) 
(THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 3) (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted).  As a result, I part ways with
the Court on both its affirmative argument about the Four-
teenth Amendment and its treatment of Apodaca, in which 
five Justices agreed the Sixth Amendment included a right 
to  unanimity  but  a  different  majority  concluded  that  the
right did not apply to the States.  See ante, at 7–11. 

I would accept petitioner’s invitation to decide this case
under the Privileges or Immunities Clause.  The Court con-
spicuously avoids saying which clause it analyzes.  See, e.g., 
ante,  at  3,  7.  But  one  assumes  from  its  silence  that  the 
Court is either following our due process incorporation prec-
edents or believes that “nothing in this case turns on” which