The movement claim that a parallel narrower citizenship category exists alongside 14A citizenship — one that ordinary Americans could occupy while declining to be 'citizens of the United States' for IRC purposes — is foreclosed
The movement proposition
A recurring argument in alternate-citizenship literature runs as follows. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. federal citizenship was not a clearly defined constitutional category. The 14th Amendment supplied the definition in 1868, primarily for the benefit of newly-emancipated persons whom the Dred Scott decision had excluded from federal citizenship. The 13th and 14th Amendments were a Reconstruction package — abolition plus citizenship structure — addressed to a specific historical class. Therefore, the argument concludes, ordinary Americans need not be 14A citizens. They can occupy a separate, older category — “state citizens,” “Citizens of the United States” in the original Article IV sense, “natural-born Citizens” outside the 14A — and in occupying that category, decline to be “citizens of the United States” within the meaning of statutes like 26 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(1)(B).
The argument has multiple variants and substantial appendices in alternate-citizenship literature. The structural move is consistent: assert a parallel narrower citizenship that ordinary Americans can elect, and use that election to fall outside federal-statute-citizen requirements that turn on “citizen of the United States.”
The constructionist seed is real
Three observations from the historical record support a portion of the argument’s premise:
Pre-1868 there was no clear constitutional definition of federal citizenship. The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), state this plainly:
“No such definition was previously found in the Constitution, nor had any attempt been made to define it by act of Congress.”
The Constitution used “Citizen of the United States” without defining it. Congress had not supplied a comprehensive statutory definition. Dred Scott had treated some U.S.-born persons as outside federal citizenship. The 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was the constitutional remedy.
The 14th Amendment supplied a new definition rather than codifying a pre-existing one. The Slaughter-House Court was explicit:
“To remove this difficulty primarily, and to establish a clear and comprehensive definition of citizenship which should declare what should constitute citizenship of the United States, and also citizenship of a State, the first clause of the first section was framed.”
This is consequential. The historical case for treating federal U.S. citizenship as a 14A-created status — rather than a status the 14A merely recognized — has the Slaughter-House Court itself on its side, in apex precedent, in 1873.
The 14th Amendment was paired with the 13th as a Reconstruction project. Slaughter-House described the unified purpose as
“the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”
The package framing of the Reconstruction Amendments — 13th abolishing slavery, 14th supplying the citizenship and equal- protection structure necessary to make abolition operative — is not a fringe historical reading. It is how the Court that construed those amendments contemporaneously understood them.
A reader who encounters the alternate-citizenship claim and asks whether the historical record opens a constructionist space — some narrower-than-modern reading of 14A citizenship that someone not within the original protected class might decline — has asked a substantive question. The historical seed has primary-source apex support.
What forecloses the operative move
The seed does not produce the conclusion the alternate-citizenship argument needs it to produce. Two independent grounds close the courtroom door.
Afroyim v. Rusk and the unitary modern structure
The Supreme Court’s modern citizenship doctrine treats 14A citizenship as the unitary federal-citizen status. Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), grounded the protection against involuntary expatriation in the 14A’s Citizenship Clause:
“There is no indication in these words of a fleeting citizenship, good at the moment it is acquired but subject to destruction by the Government at any time.”
The Court held that 14A citizenship “cannot be shifted, canceled, or diluted at the will of the Federal Government.” Citizenship under the 14A is “a citizenship the citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it” through the formal expatriation procedures Congress has enacted.
Afroyim’s structure forecloses the alternate-citizenship move at the constitutional level. It does not entertain a separate, narrower category of “non-14A federal citizen” that someone could occupy while declining 14A status. The constitutional protection runs to the federal citizenship, in the singular. The dual- citizenship structure Slaughter-House noted persists at the descriptive level — every U.S. citizen is at once a citizen of the U.S. and of their state of residence — but there is no second federal-citizenship category one could choose between, and no mechanism by which one could decline 14A citizenship while remaining a U.S. citizen for any purpose.
§ 7701(b)(1)(B) and the unmodified IRC term
The Internal Revenue Code’s definition of “nonresident alien” at 26 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(1)(B) reads:
“An individual is a nonresident alien if such individual is neither a citizen of the United States nor a resident of the United States (within the meaning of subparagraph (A)).”
The phrase “citizen of the United States” appears unmodified. The IRC does not redefine it; § 7701 contains no special-purpose citizenship definition. The term carries its constitutional and statutory meaning under the 14th Amendment and the Immigration and Nationality Act. Federal courts construing the provision have uniformly applied the term in its ordinary 14A/INA sense. No reported decision treats “citizen of the United States” in the IRC as referring to a narrower category that excludes ordinary 14A citizens.
The conjunction with the Brushaber essay analysis is straightforward: § 7701(b)(1)(B) requires non-citizenship of the United States to enter the nonresident-alien category; “citizen of the United States” means 14A/INA citizen; a U.S. citizen in that ordinary sense fails the first conjunct; therefore a U.S. citizen cannot be a nonresident alien for IRC purposes.
The naturalization-breadth claim
A textual sub-move in alternate-citizenship literature relies on the breadth of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(23), the INA’s definition of “naturalization”:
“The term ’naturalization’ means the conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth, by any means whatsoever.”
The “by any means whatsoever” formulation is genuinely broad. The reading the alternate-citizenship literature constructs: ordinary administrative interactions with the federal government (SSN registration, driver’s-license issuance under federally- conformed standards, tax-return filing) “confer nationality” in some sense and therefore constitute “naturalization” — creating a contract-of-citizenship the individual can revoke.
The reading does not survive doctrinal contact. Every federal court that has considered analogous arguments has read § 1101(a)(23)’s “by any means whatsoever” against the statutory backdrop of the Immigration and Nationality Act’s Title III naturalization provisions — application, examination, oath of allegiance, certificate issuance — and the various pathways Congress has enacted (general naturalization, derivative naturalization through parents, collective naturalization by act, military-service naturalization). The broad “any means whatsoever” formulation is read as encompassing those statutory pathways, not as a textual hook for re-classifying ordinary administrative interactions as naturalization events.
The textual hook is real. The doctrinal application has cabined it to the formal naturalization framework. This sub-move is foreclosed on the same grounds as the larger argument: the courtroom door is closed by uniform federal-court construction.
Why the verdict is “foreclosed” rather than “unsupported”
The Adverse Review verdict taxonomy distinguishes “foreclosed” (real seed, courtroom door closed) from “unsupported” (no seed, the argument never had a basis). The distinction matters for honest treatment of these claims.
The alternate-citizenship argument has primary-source apex support for its constructionist premises. Slaughter-House itself describes the 14A as having established a clear definition of federal citizenship that the prior Constitution lacked. The Reconstruction package framing is in the case. The naturalization-breadth language is in the statute. These are not fabrications.
What the argument lacks is a path from the constructionist premises to the operative conclusion. Afroyim closes the path at the constitutional level by treating 14A citizenship as unitary. § 7701(b)(1)(B)’s unmodified “citizen of the United States” closes it at the statutory level by tracking ordinary 14A/INA meaning. A century and a half of federal-court construction closes it at the application level. The seed is real; the door is closed.
Verdict
Foreclosed. The historical observations the alternate- citizenship argument leverages — pre-1868 no clear federal citizenship definition; 14A as the new constitutional definition; Reconstruction-package framing; § 1101(a)(23) breadth — are substantively real and warrant the honest treatment given above. None of them produces the conclusion that ordinary Americans can occupy a parallel narrower citizenship category and decline to be “citizens of the United States” for IRC purposes. Modern apex doctrine (Afroyim) and uniform federal-court construction of § 7701(b) close the courtroom door on that conclusion.
The constructionist record is preserved honestly. The operative move is foreclosed.
This finding pairs with the concept page on citizenship and naturalization (historical and textual development) and the Brushaber essay (IRC-application analysis). A fuller essay treatment of the historical record and the impedance routing of alternate- citizenship arguments is held for a future cycle.