Rabang

Opinion by Judge TANG; Dissent by Judge PREGERSON.

Rodolfo Rabang and six other individuals appeal from the district court’s dismissal of their complaints for failure to state a claim for relief. The complaints allege that plaintiffs or their parents were bom in the Philippine Islands when those islands were United States territory, and seek declaratory judgments that plaintiffs are United States citizens under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or under the Citizenship Clause in conjunction with § 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1401 (citizenship by descent). We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.

BACKGROUND

At the close of the Spanish-American War on December 10, 1898, Spain ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States by treaty. See Treaty of Peace between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain, Dec. 10, 1898, U.S.-Spain, art. Ill, 30 Stat. 1754 , 1755 (hereafter “Treaty of Paris”). 1 That treaty provided that “[t]he civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined by the Congress.” Treaty of Paris, swpra, art. IX,…

dissenting:

In determining that the Fourteenth Amendment Citizenship Clause requires that a person be bom in the states of the Union, the majority opinion incorrectly relies on *1455 very limited language from the Revenue Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and on just one of the Insular Cases. This narrow approach overlooks principles of common law, readily accepted by the framers of the Constitution and the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment, which demonstrate that the Citizenship Clause applies to all persons who owe allegiance to, and are born within the territory or dominion of, the United States.

The majority opinion looks for support to only one of the Insular Cases, i.e., Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 , 21 S.Ct. 770 , 45 L.Ed. 1088 (1901). Downes , which extensively discusses the history and meaning of the Revenue Clause, does not purport to interpret the Citizenship Clause, or any other provision of the Constitution. And, the majority opinion acknowledges in footnote 8 that the issue of territorial scope of the phrase “in the United States” as found in the Citizenship Clause is not an issue in Downes , which was concerned solely with whether the…