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UNITED STATES v. VAELLO MADERO 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

against any citizen because of his race.”  Id., at 48. 

Only  five  years  later,  a  unanimous  Court  in  Gibson  v. 
Mississippi, 162 U. S. 565 (1896), seemingly confirmed Har-
lan’s understanding of citizenship and the textual source of 
the  equal-citizenship  guarantee.    Writing  for  the  Court,
Justice  Harlan  declared  that  “the  Constitution  of  the 
United States, in its present form, forbids, so far as civil and 
political rights are concerned, discrimination by the General 
Government, or by the States, against any citizen because 
of his race.  All citizens are equal before the law.”  Id., at 
591 (emphasis added).2  The Court’s reference to the Con-
stitution “in its present form” (i.e., in 1896) indicates that
the  Court  located  an  equality  principle  applicable  to  both
the States and “the General Government” in the Fourteenth 
Amendment, not the Fifth.  And because the usual textual 
candidates—the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Pro-
cess  Clause,  and  Equal  Protection  Clause—apply  only  to 
“State[ s],” it stands to reason that Gibson understood the 
Citizenship Clause to forbid discrimination by the Federal 
Government “so far as civil . . . rights are concerned.”  Ibid.3 

—————— 

2 Although Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 499 (1954), recited part of
this quotation, it did not attempt to explain how Gibson’s discussion of 
racial equality among “citizens” implicated the Fifth Amendment’s Due
Process Clause, which applies broadly to all “person[s].”

3 This understanding of the Citizenship Clause likely would not render
other parts of the Fourteenth Amendment redundant.  First, the Citizen-
ship Clause would not make the Equal Protection Clause redundant be-
cause the latter applies to “person[s],” while the Citizenship Clause and 
Privileges  or  Immunities  Clause  apply  to  “citizens.”    See  McDonald  v. 
Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 850, n. 19 (2010) (THOMAS, J., concurring in part 
and concurring in judgment).  Additionally, the Equal Protection Clause
may guarantee equality only with respect to a subset of rights related to
“protection,” while the Citizenship Clause and Privileges or Immunities
Clause implicate a broader set of civil rights.  See n. 4, infra.  Second, 
this understanding of the Citizenship Clause also likely would not make 
the Privileges or Immunities Clause redundant.  In particular, there is 
no evidence suggesting that Republicans  disputed the proposition that 
citizens “could [not] be deprived of rights of national citizenship by any