Fourteenth Amendment
Reconstruction Amendments · The single most litigated amendment in the Constitution
Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment redefined citizenship, extended due process and equal protection to the states, and became the constitutional foundation for more Supreme Court cases than any other single amendment — from school desegregation to marriage equality to abortion rights.
No State shall…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.
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1, ratified 1868
The text
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 power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment. *Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment. Spelling and punctuation as transcribed by the National Archives.
Three Clauses That Reshaped American Law
Birthright citizenship, written directly into the text
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens.” This directly overturned Dred Scott‘s holding that Black Americans couldn’t be citizens, settling the question the Thirteenth Amendment alone hadn’t fully resolved.
Extended the Fifth Amendment’s promise to the states
The original Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is the textual hook courts have used to apply most of the Bill of Rights against state governments too — a process called incorporation, built case by case over more than a century.
The basis for nearly every modern discrimination case
“Equal protection of the laws” is the constitutional foundation for challenges to racial segregation, sex discrimination, and unequal treatment by state governments generally — the single most cited clause in modern civil rights litigation.
Five Landmark Cases
No other amendment on this site links to more documented landmark cases — a real reflection of how much of modern constitutional law runs through this amendment’s text.
Plessy v. Ferguson
Upheld “separate but equal” segregation in 1896 — later overturned.
Brown v. Board of Education
Overturned Plessy, ruled segregated schools inherently unequal.
Roe v. Wade
Found a constitutional right to abortion under the Due Process Clause.
Obergefell v. Hodges
Established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health
Overturned Roe, returning abortion regulation to the states.
Two of these five cases directly overturned each other
A common misconception is that landmark Supreme Court rulings, once decided, are permanent. Brown directly overturned Plessy nearly six decades later, and Dobbs directly overturned Roe after almost fifty years. Both reversals happened under the exact same constitutional text — nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment’s wording changed between either pair of rulings. What changed was the Court’s own interpretation of what that text requires, a real and recurring feature of constitutional law, not an anomaly.