Purdue Civic Literacy Practice Test

At the heart of this ruling is how citizenship is defined and what Congress can regulate in new territories. The Court said enslaved people were property, not citizens, so they had no rights to sue in federal courts and could not be citizens under the law. Building on that, it held that Congress had no power to ban slavery in the territories because doing so would infringe on slaveholders’ property rights protected by the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. In short, the decision says slaves were property and not citizens, and Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. It did not grant citizenship by naturalization, did not authorize banning slavery in all territories, and did not establish a path to freedom after a set period.