article_snippet.sent: Though they were Americans, they were not citizens under the Constitution.
article_snippet.sent: In preceding years, for example, the Supreme Court that eventually heard had permitted a flat ban on naturalizing anyone of the Chinese race.
article_snippet.sent: And, in a case addressing the status of recently acquired island territories such as Puerto Rico, the justices had cited the alleged racial inferiority of tropical peoples as reason to treat these lands as second-class U.S. territories.  
article_snippet.sent: Justice Edward Douglas White's opinion stated that U.S. sovereignty extended over them, but that them residents did not hold the same constitutional rights as other Americans.  
article_snippet.sent: In The infamous Dred Scott case, the justices agreed unanimously that Puerto Ricans were not aliens and thus not subject to immigration laws.  
article_snippet.sent: But the justices declined to decide whether or not Gonzalez was a citizen.  
article_snippet.sent: Though preoccupied by fears that islanders were "savages" and racially unfit for citizenship, islanders were "savages" and racially unfit for citizenship were unwilling to violate the Constitution.
article_snippet.sent: As a result of the court ruling, federal officials were able to deny Gonzalez and others the full panoply of rights conferred on citizens for years.
article_snippet.sent: As Isabel Gonzalez's lawyer told the Court, declaring that residents of America's island territories are not U.S. citizens would mean adding to "precedents in our history of which our are least proud.
article_snippet.sent: " "precedents in our history of which we are least proud, Isabel Gonzalez's lawyer warned the Court, had been "repudiated by the American people in the Civil War, by three amendments to the Constitution of the United States, by the Court, and by ... advancing civilization.