Five years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Citizenship Clause “put[] at rest” the proposition that “[t]hose who had been born and resided always in the District of Columbia or in theTerritories, though within the

United States, were not citizens.” Just two years before American Samoa became a territory of the United States, the Supreme Court reaffirmed in its seminal decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the Citizenship Clause codified the “ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country.” At no time in any case addressing the Citizenship Clause has the Supreme Court suggested it does not apply in States and Territories alike.

 More information can be found in Section III.B of Michael Pese’s Motion to Dismiss and also this legal brief filed by prominent citizenship scholars from across the ideological spectrum.