The full text of the 14th Amendment appears below, followed by a plain-language explanation of each of its five sections. Passed by Congress on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 9, 1868, the amendment redefined citizenship, limited state power over individual rights, changed how congressional seats are apportioned, barred former officeholders who joined a rebellion from returning to power, and protected the national debt.1National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)
Full Text of the Fourteenth 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.2Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
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.2Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
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.2Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
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.2Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.2Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
What Section 1 Means: Citizenship, Due Process, and Equal Protection
Section 1 does three things at once. First, it establishes a national rule for who counts as a citizen. Anyone born on American soil and subject to its jurisdiction, or naturalized through the legal process, is a citizen of both the United States and the state where they live. Before 1868, the Constitution never clearly defined citizenship, and states could exclude entire groups of people. The Supreme Court confirmed the reach of this birthright citizenship rule in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), holding that a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents was a citizen regardless of his parents’ nationality.3Justia. United States v. Wong Kim Ark
Second, no state may deprive any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” On its face, this means a state cannot fine you, jail you, or take your property without following fair legal procedures. Courts have also read the clause more broadly over time, recognizing what scholars call substantive due process: the idea that certain fundamental rights are so deeply rooted in American tradition that the government cannot infringe them no matter how fair the procedure is.4Congress.gov. Amdt14.S1.6.1 Overview of Substantive Due Process The right to marry, to raise your children, and to make private medical decisions have all been grounded in this reading. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the Court narrowed that doctrine, overruling Roe v. Wade and holding that the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect a right to abortion because that right is neither “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” nor “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”5Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
Third, the equal protection clause prevents states from treating similarly situated people differently without a legitimate reason. The Supreme Court relied on this clause in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to strike down racial segregation in public schools6National Archives. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and in Loving v. Virginia (1967) to invalidate state bans on interracial marriage.7Justia. Loving v. Virginia In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court drew on both the due process and equal protection clauses to hold that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry in every state.8Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges
Section 1 also contains a clause forbidding states from abridging the “privileges or immunities” of U.S. citizens. Many legal historians believe the framers intended that clause to be the main vehicle for protecting individual rights against the states. It never worked out that way. In the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), the Supreme Court read the clause so narrowly that it became functionally dormant, and the heavy lifting shifted to due process and equal protection instead.9Congress.gov. Amdt14.S1.2.1 Privileges or Immunities of Citizens and the Slaughter-House Cases
What Section 2 Means: Congressional Representation and Voting
Section 2 changed how states count residents for allocating seats in the House of Representatives. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person, inflating the political power of slaveholding states without giving enslaved people any voice. Section 2 replaced that formula by requiring every state to count the whole number of persons in its population.
The section also built in a penalty. If a state denied the right to vote to eligible male citizens aged twenty-one or older for any reason other than participation in rebellion or crime, that state’s representation in Congress would be reduced proportionally. The penalty was designed to push states to extend the vote to formerly enslaved men. In practice, it was never enforced, even as Southern states adopted poll taxes, literacy tests, and other devices to suppress Black voter turnout for decades. The voting age and gender limitations in the text were later superseded by the Fifteenth Amendment (race), the Nineteenth Amendment (sex), and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment (age lowered to eighteen).
What Section 3 Means: Disqualification From Office
Section 3 bars anyone from holding federal or state office if they previously swore an oath to support the Constitution while serving in government and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or gave aid or comfort to those who did. The provision was written to keep former Confederate officials out of power after the Civil War. It does not require a criminal conviction to take effect. Congress can lift the bar for any individual by a two-thirds vote in both chambers.
For most of the twentieth century, Section 3 sat unused. It returned to the front pages in 2024, when several states tried to remove former President Donald Trump from their presidential primary ballots on the theory that his role in the events of January 6, 2021, triggered the clause. The Supreme Court resolved the dispute in Trump v. Anderson (2024), ruling unanimously that states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders or candidates. Enforcement against anyone seeking federal office rests with Congress.10Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Anderson The decision left open exactly what form congressional enforcement would need to take, so Section 3 remains on the books but without a clear procedural mechanism for federal candidates.
What Section 4 Means: The Public Debt
Section 4 declares that the validity of the national debt “shall not be questioned.” When it was written, this served two purposes at once: it guaranteed that Union Civil War debts, including military pensions, would be honored, and it voided every debt the Confederacy had taken on. Any financial claim for compensation tied to the emancipation of enslaved people was declared illegal and void as well. The provision made sure no future Congress could reimburse the rebellion or its supporters.
The “shall not be questioned” language has taken on new life in modern fiscal debates. During debt-ceiling standoffs, some legal scholars and executive branch officials have argued that Section 4 could authorize the President to continue borrowing beyond the statutory debt limit rather than allow a default on existing obligations. The theory is that because the Constitution forbids questioning the validity of the public debt, any statute forcing a default is itself unconstitutional. No president has actually invoked this authority, and the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether Section 4 would override the debt ceiling.11Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment – Section 4 – Public Debt
What Section 5 Means: Congressional Enforcement Power
Section 5 gives Congress the authority to pass legislation enforcing every other provision of the amendment. This one sentence is the constitutional foundation for landmark civil rights laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Without it, Congress would lack an express textual basis for regulating how states treat their own residents in areas like racial discrimination, voting access, and public accommodations.
The Supreme Court has placed limits on this power, holding that Congress may only enact laws that are “congruent and proportional” to the constitutional violations it seeks to remedy. Congress cannot use Section 5 to redefine the substance of constitutional rights themselves. The reach of federal civil rights legislation therefore tracks how broadly or narrowly the Court reads the underlying rights in Sections 1 through 4.