I am happy to pass along this guest post from my frequent collaborator, Elliott Wainwright.
--
At oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked several times how the Citizenship Clause works when members of Indian tribes are born beyond the limits of tribal domains. The peculiar Oregon Territory citizenship statute Congress passed in 1872 and the effect it had—or ought to have had—on the citizenship status of tribal Indians born in that territory appears to bear on Justice Amy Coney Barrett's inquiry. However, despite the fact that John Vlahoplus and Michael L. Rosin have written about the 1872 law in recent years, it seems to have gone unmentioned in litigation over President Trump's January 2025 executive order regarding citizenship at birth. Nor was it put under the microscope in United States v. Wong Kim Ark or Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court's flagship Citizenship Clause cases.
