“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.” That sentence, the opening of Section 1, is the most quoted line in the Fourteenth Amendment and the entry point to almost every debate about what the amendment means. The most useful Fourteenth Amendment quotes come from three places: the text of the amendment itself, the 1866 statements of the lawmakers who wrote it, and the Supreme Court opinions that have interpreted it for more than 150 years. What follows collects the lines that matter, with the context needed to understand them.
The Text of the Amendment
Section 1 does the heavy constitutional work, but the amendment has five sections, and several of the others have taken on new prominence in recent years.
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.”1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
Four separate guarantees live in that paragraph: the Citizenship Clause, the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause. Nearly every famous quotation about the amendment is really a quotation about one of those four.
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.”1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment The section goes on to say that if a state denies the right to vote to eligible male citizens, its representation in Congress will be reduced proportionally. This language replaced the original Constitution’s Three-Fifths Clause.
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 … 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.”1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
Originally aimed at former Confederates, Section 3 returned to the national conversation in 2024 when the Supreme Court addressed whether states could use it to keep a presidential candidate off the ballot.
Sections 4 and 5
Section 4 declares that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned,” while voiding any debts incurred to support rebellion and any claims for compensation for the emancipation of enslaved people.2Constitution Annotated. Section 4 – Public Debt Section 5 is a single sentence granting Congress the “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
Quotes from the Drafters
Two members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction left the most important record of what Section 1 was designed to do.
John Bingham
Representative John Bingham of Ohio is widely recognized as the principal author of Section 1. Defending an early draft on the House floor in 1866, he said: “The proposition pending before the House is simply a proposition to arm the Congress of the United States, by the consent of the people of the United States, with the power to enforce the bill of rights as it stands in the Constitution today. It hath that extent — no more.”3National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – Civil Rights
Bingham’s point was concrete. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights restricted only the federal government. A state could suppress speech or deny jury trials without violating the Constitution. Bingham designed Section 1 to close that gap.
Jacob Howard
Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan introduced the amendment to the Senate on May 23, 1866, and gave the most detailed public explanation of what the Privileges or Immunities Clause was meant to protect. Howard called the clause “very important” and said its protections should include “the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution,” listing speech, press, assembly, the right to bear arms, protection from unreasonable searches, the right to a jury trial, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment.3National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – Civil Rights
Howard argued this “mass of privileges, immunities, and rights” was not enforceable against state governments under the existing Constitution, and the amendment’s purpose was to “compel the states at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees.” His Senate speech remains the single most cited piece of legislative history for the amendment’s original scope.
Opposition
President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a precursor to the amendment, and questioned whether formerly enslaved people “possess the requisite qualifications to entitle them to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States.” Johnson also warned that the legislation attempted to fix “a perfect equality of the white and colored races … by Federal law in every State of the Union.”
In Congress, Representative Andrew Rogers of New Jersey predicted that under Section 1 “despotism and tyranny will march forth undisturbed and unbroken.” Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania focused on the Citizenship Clause: “Are the states to lose control over this immigration? Is the United States to determine that they are to be citizens?” The opponents understood what the amendment would do. They disagreed that it should.
Equal Protection Quotes
The Equal Protection Clause has produced some of the most quoted language in American law.
Justice Harlan’s Plessy Dissent (1896)
The Plessy v. Ferguson majority upheld Louisiana’s law requiring racial segregation on railroads under a “separate but equal” reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter:
“But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved.”4Cornell Law School. Plessy v. Ferguson
Harlan’s line “our constitution is color-blind” has been invoked by advocates across the political spectrum for very different purposes. His dissent stood alone for 58 years.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
The unanimous Brown opinion overruled Plessy’s doctrine in public education: “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The Court found that separating students “solely on the basis of race” deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities “even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal.”5Justia Law. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Loving v. Virginia (1967)
Striking down Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, Chief Justice Warren wrote that “the clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States.” The opinion found “patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination” behind the law, noting that Virginia’s decision to prohibit only interracial marriages involving white persons showed the classifications were “measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.”6Justia. Loving v. Virginia
The closing passage remains one of the most quoted lines in marriage law: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. … Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.”6Justia. Loving v. Virginia
Reed v. Reed (1971)
Reed was the first Supreme Court decision to strike down a law under the Equal Protection Clause for discriminating on the basis of sex. Idaho’s probate code automatically preferred men over women as estate administrators. The Court held the preference was “based solely on a discrimination prohibited by and therefore violative of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”7Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971)
The opinion set out the standard for evaluating legal classifications: “A classification must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.”7Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971)
Due Process and Liberty Quotes
“Liberty” in the Due Process Clause is a short word, and the Court has spent more than a century arguing about what it covers.
Lochner v. New York (1905)
In the early 20th century the Court read the Due Process Clause to protect a broad right to economic freedom. Striking down a New York law limiting bakery workers to 60-hour workweeks, the majority declared: “The general right to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty of the individual protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.”8Justia. Lochner v. New York
Lochner became shorthand for judicial overreach. The Court abandoned the approach during the New Deal era, and “Lochnerizing” is now a term of criticism aimed at judges accused of reading their own policy preferences into the Due Process Clause.
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
Griswold struck down a Connecticut law banning the use of contraceptives and introduced the idea of constitutional privacy. Justice Douglas wrote that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance,” and that “various guarantees create zones of privacy.”9Justia. Griswold v. Connecticut The word “penumbras” has been mocked and celebrated in roughly equal measure, but the underlying idea drives nearly every privacy case that followed.
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)
Justice Kennedy grounded the same-sex marriage ruling in both clauses working together: “The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.”10U.S. Department of Justice. Obergefell v. Hodges
Kennedy connected the two clauses directly: “The Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause are connected in a profound way, though they set forth independent principles.” He also addressed the argument that only historically recognized rights deserve protection: “rights come not from ancient sources alone. They rise, too, from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.”10U.S. Department of Justice. Obergefell v. Hodges
Recent Cases
Three Supreme Court decisions from the last fifteen years show that the amendment’s most contested questions remain open.
McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010)
McDonald held that “the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller.” The broader test the Court reaffirmed asks whether a Bill of Rights protection is “fundamental to our Nation’s particular scheme of ordered liberty and system of justice.”11Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. McDonald v. City of Chicago Justice Thomas concurred separately, arguing the Court should have used the Privileges or Immunities Clause, which he believed “automatically applied all of the protections in the Bill of Rights to states and cities.” The majority declined.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)
Dobbs overruled Roe v. Wade and tightened the test for recognizing unenumerated rights under the Due Process Clause. Justice Alito wrote that the Court must ask “whether the right is ‘deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition’ and whether it is essential to our Nation’s ‘scheme of ordered liberty.'”12Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
The opinion named the tension directly: “In interpreting what is meant by ‘liberty,’ the Court must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what the Fourteenth Amendment protects with the Court’s own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.”12Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
Trump v. Anderson (2024)
After Colorado’s Supreme Court removed a presidential candidate from the state’s primary ballot under Section 3, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed unanimously: “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”13Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Anderson
The per curiam opinion emphasized that “nothing in the Constitution delegates to the States any power to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency,” and pointed to Section 5, noting that “the terms of the Amendment speak only to enforcement by Congress, which enjoys power to enforce the Amendment through legislation pursuant to Section 5.”13Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Anderson The decision left open what specific legislation Congress would need to pass to enforce Section 3 against a federal candidate.