Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/54

6 forbade racial discrimination generally nor did it guarantee particular rights to all persons. Rather, it required an equality in certain specific rights”). And, while the 1866 Act used the rights of “white citizens” as a benchmark, its rule was decidedly colorblind, safeguarding legal equality for all citizens “of every race and color” and providing the same rights to all.

The 1866 Act’s evolution further highlights its rule of equality. To start, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), had previously held that blacks “were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government” and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Id., at 407, 411. The Act, however, would effectively overrule Dred Scott and ensure the equality that had been promised to blacks. But the Act went further still. On January 29, 1866, Senator Lyman Trumbull, the bill’s principal sponsor in the Senate, proposed text stating that “all persons of African descent born in the United States are hereby declared to be citizens.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 474. The following day, Trumbull revised his proposal, removing the reference to “African descent” and declaring more broadly that “all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign Power,” are “citizens of the United States.” Id., at 498.

“In the years before the Fourteenth Amendment’s adoption, jurists and legislators often connected citizenship with equality,” where “the absence or presence of one entailed the absence or presence of the other.” United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (, concurring) (slip op., at 6). The addition of a citizenship guarantee thus evidenced an intent to broaden the provision, extending beyond recently freed blacks and incorporating a more general view of equality for all Americans. Indeed, the drafters later included a specific carveout for “Indians not taxed,” demonstrating the breadth of the bill’s