Privileges or Immunities Clause - Right To Travel

Right To Travel

The right to travel from one state to another was already protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the original unamended Constitution. However, the right to travel has additional components, such as the right to take up residence and become a citizen of a different state. The Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause addresses residency: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

In the 1999 case of Saenz v. Roe, Justice Stevens, writing for the majority, said that the "right to travel" also has a component protected by the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

Despite fundamentally differing views concerning the coverage of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, most notably expressed in the majority and dissenting opinions in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), it has always been common ground that this Clause protects the third component of the right to travel. Writing for the majority in the Slaughter-House Cases, Justice Miller explained that one of the privileges conferred by this Clause "is that a citizen of the United States can, of his own volition, become a citizen of any State of the Union by a bona fide residence therein, with the same rights as other citizens of that State."

Justice Miller had written in the Slaughter-House Cases that the right to become a citizen of a state by residing in the state "is conferred by the very article under consideration."