Some tax protesters and other conspiracy theorists argue that all Americans are citizens of individual states as opposed to citizens of the United States, and that the United States therefore has no power to tax citizens or impose other federal laws outside of Washington D.C. and other federal enclaves The first sentence of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states:
Courts have uniformly held that this argument that the Fourteenth Amendment divested state citizens of U.S. citizenship is plainly incorrect. In Kantor v. Wellesley Galleries, Ltd., the court explained that "hile the Fourteenth Amendment does not create a national citizenship, it has the effect of making that citizenship 'paramount and dominant' instead of 'derivative and dependent' upon state citizenship". See also United States v. Ward,Fox v. Commissioner and United States v. Baker.
Citizenship of the several States before the Fourteenth Amendment
Before the Fourteenth Amendment there was only one class of citizens under the Constitution of the United States. A person, as such, was a citizen in three capacities: as a citizen of a State (2), as a citizen of the several States (3), and as a citizen of the United States (4). Each was based on jurisdiction, that is, the jurisdiction of the appropriate government and under each a person had rights and privileges. As a citizen of the State, the constitution and laws of the individual state provided the rights and privileges. As a citizen of the several States, a citizen of a State had the same rights and privileges (in general) as the citizens of the State in which he was in. And, as a citizen of the United States, the Bill of Rights and constitutional provisions and amendments plus the laws of the United States contained them.
Citizenship of the several States after the Fourteenth Amendment
After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, The Supreme Court of the United States decided in the Slaughterhouse Cases that because of the Fourteenth Amendment there were now two separate and distinct citizens under the Constitution of the United States (and not the Fourteenth Amendment): a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the several States;
To wit:
"We do not conceal from ourselves the great responsibility which this duty devolves upon us. No questions so far reaching and pervading in their consequences, so profoundly interesting to the people of this country, and so important in their bearing upon the relations of the United States and of the several States to each other, and to the citizens of the states and of the United States, have been before this court during the official life of any of its present members. We have given every opportunity for a full hearing at the bar; we have discussed it freely and compared views among ourselves; we have taken ample time for careful deliberation, and we now propose to announce the judgments which we have formed in the construction of those articles, so far as we have found them necessary to the decision of the cases before us, and beyond that we have neither the inclination nor the right to go.” Slaughterhouse Cases: 83 U.S. 36, at 67.
And:
"The next observation is more important in view of the arguments of counsel in the present case. It is, that the distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a state is clearly recognized and established...
It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a state, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.
We think this distinction and its explicit recognition in this Amendment of great weight in this argument, because the next paragraph of this same section, which is the one mainly relied on by the plaintiffs in error, speaks only of privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of those of citizens of the several states. The argument, however, in favor of the plaintiffs, rests wholly on the assumption that the citizenship is the same and the privileges and immunities guaranteed by the clause (that is Section 2, Clause 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment) are the same.” Slaughterhouse Cases: 83 U.S. 36, 73-74.
Also:
"Fortunately we are not without judicial construction of this clause of the Constitution (that is, Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1). The first and the leading case on the subject is that of Corfield v. Coryell , decided by Mr. Justice Washington in the circuit court for the district of Pennsylvania in 1823. 4 Wash C. C. 371.
'The inquiry,' he says, 'is, what are the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States? . . .
This definition of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the states is adopted in the main by this court in the recent case of Ward v. Maryland. . . .
Having shown that the privileges and immunities relied on in the argument are those which belong to citizens of the states as such, and that they are left to the state governments for security and protection, and not by this article placed under the special care of the Federal government, we may hold ourselves excused from defining the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States which no state can abridge, until some case involving those privileges may make it necessary to do so.” Slaughterhouse Cases: 83 U.S. 36, 75-76, 78-79.
Privileges and Immunities of a citizen of the United States are in the Fourteenth Amendment. For a citizen of the several States, they are located at Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution:
"The intention of section 2, Article IV (of the Constitution), was to confer on the citizens of the several States a general citizenship, and to communicate all the privileges and immunities which the citizen of the same State would be entitled to under like circumstances."
It has been incorrectly argued by tax protesters that before Slaughterhouse (and possibly Ward (5)), one could be a citizen of the several States and a citizen of the United States. After Slaughterhouse, however, one could be a citizen of the United States or a citizen of the several States, but not both. This statement has uniformly been held incorrect by the courts. By force of the Fourteenth Amendment, a United States citizen residing in a state of the Union becomes a citizen of that state. As such he or she would have privileges and immunities found in the Fourteenth Amendment plus those privileges and immunities provided for under the constitution and laws of the state where he or she resides. A citizen of the several States domicile in an individual state becomes by Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1, a citizen of that state. As such he or she would have privileges and immunities located in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1, plus those privileges and immunities provided for under the constitution and laws of the state where he or she is domicile. However, such a person would also be a citizen of the United States, and subject to the laws of the United States.
Footnotes
(1) ". . . Before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, the citizens of each State were, in a qualified sense at least, aliens to one another, for the reason that the several States before that event were regarded by each other as independent Governments, each one possessing a sufficiency of sovereign power to enable it to claim the right of naturalization; and, undoubtedly, each one of them possessed for itself the right of naturalizing foreigners, and each one, also, if it had seen fit so to exercise its sovereign power, might have declared the citizens of every other State to be aliens in reference to itself. With a view to prevent such confusion and disorder, and to put the citizens of the several States on an equality with each other as to all fundamental rights, a clause was introduced in the Constitution declaring that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."
The effect of this clause was to constitute ipso facto the citizens of each one of the original States citizens of the United States. And how did they antecedenty become citizens of the several States? By birth or by naturalization. They became such in virtue of national law, or rather of natural law which recognizes persons born within the jurisdiction of every country as being subjects or citizens of that country. Such persons were, therefore, citizens of the United States as were born in the country or were made such by naturalization; and the Constitution declares that they are entitled, as citizens, to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. They are, by constitutional right, entitled to these privileges and immunities, and may assert this right and ask for their enforcement whenever they go within the limits of the several States of the Union.
It would be a curious question to solve what are the privileges and immunities of citizens of each of the States in the several States. I do not propose to go at any length into that question at this time. It would be a somewhat barren discussion. But it is certain the clause was inserted in the Constitution for some good purpose. It has in view some results beneficial to the citizens of the several States, or it would not be found there; yet I am not aware that the Supreme Court have ever undertaken to define either the nature or extent of the privileges and immunities thus guarantied. . . . But we may gather some intimation of what probably will be the opinion of the judiciary by referring to a case adjudged many years ago in one of the circuit courts of the United States by Judge Washington; and I will trouble the Senate but for a moment by reading what that very learned and excellent judge says about these privileges and immunities of the citizens of each State in the several States. It is the case of Corfield vs. Coryell, found in 4 Washington's Circuit Reports, page 380. Judge Washington says:
'The next question is whether the act infringes that section of the Constitution which declares that 'the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.
The inquiry is, what are the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States? . . .'
Such is the character of the privileges and immunities spoken of in the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution."
(2) Article III, Section 2 and Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1, Constitution of the United States.
"The judicial Power shall extend . . . to Controversies between two or more States;-- (between a State and Citizens of another State );--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects." There is too,
"It may be esteemed the basis of the Union, that 'the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States.' And if it be a just principle that every government ought to possess the means of executing its own provisions by its own authority, it will follow, that in order to the inviolable maintenance of that equality of privileges and immunities to which the citizens of the Union will be entitled, the national judiciary ought to preside in all cases in which one State or its citizens are opposed to another State or its citizens. To secure the full effect of so fundamental a provision against all evasion and subterfuge, it is necessary that its construction should be committed to that tribunal which, having no local attachments, will be likely to be impartial between the different States and their citizens, and which, owing its official existence to the Union, will never be likely to feel any bias inauspicious to the principles on which its is founded." .
(3) Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1, Constitution of the United States:
"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." And,
"It is obvious, that, if the citizens of each state were to be deemed aliens to each other, they could not take, or hold real estate, or other privileges, except as other aliens. The intention of this clause was to confer on them, if one may so say, a general citizenship; and to communicate all the privileges and immunities, which the citizens of the same state would be entitled to under the like circumstances."
"In a letter to his son, Sept. 24th, Mr. (Rufus) King said:
"On September 12th the report of the committee on the elective franchise was made, giving the right of suffrage to "every white male citizen," etc. Mr. Jay moved on the 19th
'that the word white be stricken out. Chancellor Kent supported this motion and among other reasons suggested that the exclusion of negroes might be opposed to the constitution of the United States, which provided that 'the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states.' "
(4) Article II, Section 5, Constitution of the United States:
"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President." And,
"To determine, then, who were citizens of the United States before the adoption of the amendment it is necessary to ascertain what persons originally associated themselves together to form the nation, and what were afterwards admitted to membership. Looking at the Constitution itself we find that it was ordained and established by 'the people of the United States,' and then going further back, we find that these were the people of the several States that had before dissolved the political bands which connected them with Great Britain, and assumed a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth, and that had by Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, in which they took the name of 'the United States of America,' entered in to a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attack made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.
Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these States when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, became ipso facto a citizen - a member of the nation created by its adoption. He was one the persons associating together to form the nation, and was, consequently, one of its original citizens. As to this there has never been a doubt. Disputes have arisen as to whether or not certain persons or certain classes of persons were part of the people at the time, but never as to their citizenship if they were." Minor v. Happersett: 88 U.S. 162, 167 (1874).
(5) "Comprehensive as the power of the states is to lay and collect taxes and excises, it is, nevertheless, clear, in the judgment of the court, that the power cannot be exercised to any extent in a manner forbidden by the Constitution; and inasmuch as the Constitution provides that the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states, it follows that the defendant might lawfully sell, or offer or expose for sale, within the district described in the indictment, any goods which the permanent residents of the state might sell, or offer or expose for sale in that district, without being subjected to any higher tax or excise than that exacted by law of such permanent residents.
Grant that the states may impose discriminating taxes against the citizens of other states, and it will soon be found that the power conferred upon Congress to regulate interstate commerce is of no value, as the unrestricted power of the states to tax will prove to be more efficacious to promote inequality than any regulations which Congress can pass to preserve the equality of right contemplated by the Constitution among the citizens of the several states." Ward v. State of Maryland: 79 U.S. 418, 430-431 (1870).
