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Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Usually considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to formerly enslaved Americans following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Loving v. Virginia (1967) regarding interracial marriage, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion (overturned in 2022), Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage, and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) regarding race-based college admissions. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials.

The amendment's first section includes the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause broadly defines citizenship, superseding the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had held that Americans descended from African slaves could not be citizens of the United States. Since the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), the Privileges or Immunities Clause has been interpreted to do very little.


The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without a fair procedure. The Supreme Court has ruled that this clause makes most of the Bill of Rights as applicable to the states as it is to the federal government, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural requirements that state laws must satisfy. The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people, including non-citizens, within its jurisdiction. This clause has been the basis for many decisions rejecting discrimination against people belonging to various groups.


The second, third, and fourth sections of the amendment are seldom litigated. However, the second section's reference to "rebellion, or other crime" has been invoked as a constitutional ground for felony disenfranchisement. It was held, under Trump v. Anderson (2024), that only the federal government can enforce section three and not the states. The fourth section was held, in Perry v. United States (1935), to prohibit Congress from abrogating a contract of debt incurred by a prior Congress. The fifth section gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment's provisions by "appropriate legislation"; however, under City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), this power may not be used to contradict a Supreme Court decision interpreting the amendment. The Reconstruction Amendments and thus the Fourteenth Amendment "were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty."[1] The Reconstruction Amendments affected the constitutional division of power between U.S. state governments and the federal government of the United States,[2] for "The Fourteenth Amendment “expand[ed] federal power at the expense of state autonomy” and thus “fundamentally altered the balance of state and federal power struck by the Constitution.” Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 59 (1996); see also Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 345 (1880)."[3]

Fraud in the process. Technically, this is not a loss of citizenship but rather a voiding of the purported naturalization and a declaration that the immigrant never was a citizen of the United States.[52]

naturalization

Affiliation with an "anti-American" organization (such as the Communist party or other allegedly totalitarian party, or a terrorist organization) within five years of naturalization. The State Department views such affiliations as sufficient evidence that an applicant must have lied or concealed evidence in the naturalization process.[52]

[53]

Other-than-honorable discharge from the U.S. armed forces before five years of honorable service, if honorable service was the basis for the naturalization.

[52]

Voluntary relinquishment of citizenship. This may be accomplished either through renunciation procedures specially established by the State Department or through other actions that demonstrate desire to give up national citizenship.

[54]

reduce the Congressional representation of the former slave states (for example, by basing representation on the number of legal voters rather than the number of inhabitants)

guarantee freed slaves the right to vote

Some, such as legal scholar , fiscal expert Bruce Bartlett and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have argued that a debt ceiling may be unconstitutional and therefore void as long as it interferes with the duty of the government to pay interest on outstanding bonds and to make payments owed to pensioners (that is, Social Security and Railroad Retirement Act recipients).[264][265]

Garrett Epps

Legal analyst has argued that Section 4 gives the President unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing.[266]

Jeffrey Rosen

Professor and constitutional scholar argues that it is not a matter of Presidential power but Presidential duty—to enforce already legislated laws and payments—that obligates the President, when confronting two incompatible mandates (the 14th amendment versus the debt ceiling created by Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917), to choose that which is not only in keeping with his Constitutional duty to execute laws Congress has passed that have created debt but also in mind of the pragmatic consequences to the security and well-being of the United States.[267]

Laurence Tribe

professor and dean at University of California, Irvine School of Law, has argued that not even in a "dire financial emergency" could the President raise the debt ceiling as "there is no reasonable way to interpret the Constitution that [allows him to do so]".[268]

Erwin Chemerinsky

Knight Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale University, opined that like Congress the President is bound by the Fourteenth Amendment, for otherwise, he could violate any part of the amendment at will. Because the President must obey the Section 4 requirement not to put the validity of the public debt into question, Balkin argued that President Obama would have been obliged "to prioritize incoming revenues to pay the public debt, interest on government bonds and any other 'vested' obligations. What falls into the latter category is not entirely clear, but a large number of other government obligations—and certainly payments for future services—would not count and would have to be sacrificed. This might include, for example, Social Security payments."[260]

Jack Balkin

Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, during the Civil War several British and French banks had lent large sums of money to the Confederacy to support its war against the Union.[257] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States bond "went beyond the congressional power".[258]


The debt-ceiling crises of 2011, 2013, and 2023 raised the question of what the President's authority under Section 4 is.[259][260][261][262] During the 2011 crisis, former President Bill Clinton said he would invoke the Fourteenth Amendment to raise the debt ceiling if he were still in office, and force a ruling by the Supreme Court.[263]

1974:

Richardson v. Ramirez

1985:

Hunter v. Underwood

Jus soli

Political equality

United States constitutional criminal procedure

United States labor law

Goldstone, Lawrence (2011). . Walker & Company. ISBN 978-0802717924. Preview.

Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865–1903

Graber, Mark A. (November 2012). . Columbia Law Review. 112 (7): 1501–1549. JSTOR 41708157. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015. Pdf.

"Subtraction by addition?: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments"

(November 2012). "Federal protection, paternalism, and the virtually forgotten prohibition of voluntary peonage". Columbia Law Review. 112 (7): 1607–1639. JSTOR 41708160. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015. PDF.

Soifer, Aviam

(2011). "Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment". Journal of Legal Analysis. Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 10-06. 3: 165–263. doi:10.1093/jla/3.1.165. SSRN 1538862.

Barnett, Randy E.

Bogen, David S. (2003). . Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0313313479. Retrieved March 19, 2013.

Privileges and Immunities: A Reference Guide to the United States Constitution

Graber, Mark A. (2011). . Maryland Law Review. 71 (1): 12–20. Pdf.

"Foreword: Plus or minus one: the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments"

(PDF). GPO Access. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 18, 2005. Retrieved September 11, 2005. (PDF, providing text of amendment and dates of ratification)

"Amendments to the Constitution of the United States"

CRS Annotated Constitution: Fourteenth Amendment

Fourteenth Amendment and related resources at the Library of Congress

provides a transcript of the debates in Congress.

Congressional Debates of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Galloway, Russell W. Jr. (1989). . Santa Clara Law Review. 29 (1). Retrieved February 8, 2021.

"Basic Equal Protection Analysis"