In 1992, the state of California enacted a statute limiting the maximum welfare benefits available to newly arrived residents.

The District Court judge temporarily enjoined the state from enforcing the statute, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWORA) into law, which created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and expressly permitted states to limit aid to people who had been residents for less than a year.

In 1997, the two plaintiffs in this case sued in the same court as the prior litigants, this time challenging both the California statute and the PRWORA's durational residency provision.

The district court judge, David F. Levi, certified the case as a class action and issued a preliminary injunction.

[6] Justice Stevens, writing for the majority, found that although the "right to travel" was not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the concept was "firmly embedded in our jurisprudence."

For the proposition that this amendment protected a citizen's right to resettle in other states, Stevens cited the majority opinion in the Slaughter-House Cases:[7] Despite fundamentally differing views concerning the coverage of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, most notably expressed in the majority and dissenting opinions in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), it has always been common ground that this Clause protects the third component of the right to travel.

This distinguishes them from a "readily portable benefit, such as a divorce or a college education", for which durational residency requirements had been upheld in cases such as Sosna v. Iowa and Vlandis v. Kline.

Justice Thomas dissented separately, because he felt that the majority attributed a meaning to the Fourteenth Amendment Privileges or Immunities Clause that its framers did not intend.

He looked to the historical meaning and use of the language in the clause, citing the Charter of 1606, which guaranteed the citizens of Virginia therein all the "Liberties, Franchises, and Immunities" of a person born in England.