Cite as: 526 U. S. 489 (1999)
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
States should not be subject to discrimination solely because they live out of State. See Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168 (1869); Hicklin v. Orbeck, 437 U. S. 518 (1978). Like the traditional right-to-travel guarantees discussed above, however, this Clause has no application here, because respondents expressed a desire to stay in California and become citizens of that State. Respondents therefore plainly fall outside the protections of Article IV, § 2.
Finally, I agree with the proposition that a "citizen of the United States can, of his own volition, become a citizen of any State of the Union by a bonâ fide residence therein, with the same rights as other citizens of that State." SlaughterHouse Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 80 (1873).
But I cannot see how the right to become a citizen of another State is a necessary "component" of the right to travel, or why the Court tries to marry these separate and distinct rights. A person is no longer "traveling" in any sense of the word when he finishes his journey to a State which he plans to make his home. Indeed, under the Court's logic, the protections of the Privileges or Immunities Clause recognized in this case come into play only when an individual stops traveling with the intent to remain and become a citizen of a new State. The right to travel and the right to become a citizen are distinct, their relationship is not reciprocal, and one is not a "component" of the other. Indeed, the same dicta from the Slaughter-House Cases quoted by the Court actually treat the right to become a citizen and the right to travel as separate and distinct rights under the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See id., at 79-80.1 At most, restrictions on an indi-1 The Court's decision in the Slaughter-House Cases only confirms my view that state infringement on the right to travel is limited to the kind of barrier established in Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160 (1941), and its discussion is worth quoting in full:
"But lest it should be said that no such privileges and immunities are to be found if those we have been considering are excluded, we venture
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