The Jean Rice Project Curriculum
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14TH AMENDMENT
Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868. The 14th Amendment changed a portion of Article I, Section 2. A portion of the 14th Amendment was changed by the 26th Amendment
U.S. Constitution | 14th Amendment
Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868. The 14th Amendment changed a portion of Article I, Section 2. A portion of the 14th Amendment was changed by the 26th Amendment
Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The Equal Protection Clause
by Brian T. Fitzpatrick
Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School
by Theodore M. Shaw
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law
The Equal Protection Clause
Ratified as it was after the Civil War in 1868, there is little doubt what the Equal Protection Clause was intended to do: stop states from discriminating against blacks. But the text of the Clause is worded very broadly and it has come a long way from its original purpose. For example, despite its reference to “state[s],” the Clause has been read into the Fifth Amendment to prevent the federal government from discriminating as well.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, the Court considered whether racial segregation by the government violated the Constitution. If people were separated into different facilities by race, but those facilities were purportedly equally suitable, did that constitute discrimination? Historians have debated whether the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to end such segregation, but in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court ruled by a 7-1 vote that so-called “separate but equal” facilities (in that case, train cars) for blacks and whites did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. The decision cemented into place racist Jim Crow-era laws. In a famous dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan disagreed, stating “[o]ur Constitution is color-blind . . . .” Plessy remained the law of the land until 1954, when it was overruled in Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court unanimously overruled the reasoning of Plessy and held that separate schools for blacks and whites violated the Equal Protection Clause. Brown was a decisive turning point in a decades-long struggle to dismantle governmentally imposed segregation, not only in schools but throughout American society. Brown was a turning point, but it was not the end of the struggle. For example, it was not until 1967 in Loving v. Virginia that the Supreme Court held that laws prohibiting interracial marriages violated Equal Protection.
Although the original purpose was to protect blacks from discrimination, the broad wording has led the Supreme Court to hold that all racial discrimination (including against whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans) is constitutionally suspect. These holdings have led to an ongoing debate for the last several decades over whether it is unconstitutional for governments to consider the race of blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans as a positive factor in university admissions, employment, and government contracting. We will address this question in our separate statements.
The Supreme Court has also used the Equal Protection Clause to prohibit discrimination on other bases besides race. Most laws are assessed under so-called “rational basis scrutiny.” Here, any plausible and legitimate reason for the discrimination is sufficient to render it constitutional. But laws that rely on so-called “suspect classifications” are assessed under “heightened scrutiny.” Here, the government must have important or compelling reasons to justify the discrimination, and the discrimination must be carefully tailored to serve those reasons. What types of classifications are “suspect”? In light of the history of the Equal Protection Clause, it is no surprise that race and national origin are suspect classifications. But the Court has also held that gender, immigration status, and wedlock status at birth qualify as suspect classifications. The Court has rejected arguments that age and poverty should be elevated to suspect classifications.
One of the greatest controversies regarding the Equal Protection Clause today is whether the Court should find that sexual orientation is a suspect classification. In its recent same-sex marriage opinion, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court suggested that discrimination against gays and lesbians can violate the Equal Protection Clause. But the Court did not decide what level of scrutiny should apply, leaving this question for another day.
Like many constitutional provisions, the Equal Protection Clause continues to be in flux.