Article 4, Section 2

[glummer]

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

Can someone explain this to me? I thought I understood English better than most, but I can make no clear sense of that sentence.
The only thing I can come up with, is that out-of-Staters can't be subject to different laws, but they obviously are (e.g. hunting licenses, carry permits, etc.)
So what DOES it mean?

 

[Ieyasu]

Does the explanation at the following link help?
http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art4frag9_user.html

 

[glummer]

Thanks. Helps a lot. But it seems to make the hunting-license differential completely unconstitutional. How do they get around that?

 

[legaleagle_45]

How do they get around that?

The clause only protects "fundamental interests" ..."interference with which would frustrate the purposes of the formation of the Union".... recreational hunting has been deemed by SCOTUS not to be fundamental. There are other exceptions... voting by non residents is not allowed even though voting is "fundamental"... reasonable residency requirements are allowed. In state vs. out of state tuition differentials are based upon "state largess" which non residents are not allowed to share in... same with different fees for staying at state parks.

 

[Ieyasu]

Glummer,

I don't know whether this helps, but here's a link to an early court decision (1797): pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a4_2_1s10.html

The object of the convention in introducing this clause into the constitution, was to invest the citizens of the different states with the general rights of citizenship; that they should not be foreigners, but citizens. To go thus far was essentially necessary to the very existence of a federate government, and in reality was no more than had been provided for by the first confederation in the fourth article.

But it never could have been the intention of the framers of our national government, to melt down the states into one common mass; to put the citizens of each in the exact same situation, and confer on them equal rights: this principle would have been wholly destructive of the state government.