Amendments 11 through 27 to the U.S. Constitution are the seventeen changes ratified after the Bill of Rights, spanning from 1795 to 1992. They cover state immunity from lawsuits, how presidents are elected, the end of slavery, national citizenship and equal protection, the federal income tax, direct election of senators, Prohibition and its repeal, women’s suffrage, presidential term limits and succession, voting rights for D.C. residents and 18-year-olds, the ban on poll taxes, and the timing of congressional pay raises. Each required a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress (or a convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures) and ratification by three-fourths of the states.1National Archives. Article V, U.S. Constitution
11th Amendment (1795): States Cannot Be Sued in Federal Court by Outsiders
The 11th Amendment bars federal courts from hearing lawsuits filed against a state by citizens of another state or by foreign nationals.2Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Eleventh Amendment Congress passed it in reaction to Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), where the Supreme Court let a South Carolina citizen sue Georgia to collect a debt, alarming states that feared their treasuries would be drained.3Justia Law. Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793)
This protection, called state sovereign immunity, is not absolute. Under the Ex parte Young doctrine from 1908, you can still sue a state official in federal court to stop that official from enforcing an unconstitutional law.4Congress.gov. Amdt11.6.3 Officer Suits and State Sovereign Immunity States can also waive immunity voluntarily, and Congress can override it in limited situations when enforcing the Reconstruction Amendments.
12th Amendment (1804): Separate Electoral Votes for President and Vice President
The 12th Amendment changed how the Electoral College works. Originally, each elector cast two votes for president, and the runner-up became vice president. That produced the deadlock of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson tied with his own running mate Aaron Burr and the House needed 36 ballots to sort it out.5Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twelfth Amendment
Now electors cast separate ballots for the two offices. If no presidential candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the House picks the president from the top three vote-getters, with each state delegation casting a single vote. That contingent procedure has been used once since ratification, when the House chose John Quincy Adams in 1825.
13th Amendment (1865): Abolition of Slavery
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States and any territory under its control, with one exception: involuntary servitude is still permitted as punishment for a crime.6Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Thirteenth Amendment Federal and state prison systems have relied on that exception to require incarcerated people to work, and several states have put ballot measures before voters recently to close the loophole at the state level.
Section 2 gave Congress the power to enforce abolition through legislation, which became the legal foundation for the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and later civil rights laws.
14th Amendment (1868): Citizenship, Due Process, and Equal Protection
The 14th Amendment is the most litigated provision in the Constitution. Section 1 grants citizenship to every person born or naturalized in the United States, overruling the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. It also bars any state from taking a person’s life, liberty, or property without due process, and requires states to give all people within their borders equal protection of the laws.7Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment
The Due Process Clause became the vehicle for something the framers likely did not anticipate: applying the Bill of Rights to state governments. Starting with Gitlow v. New York in 1925, the Supreme Court began “incorporating” individual protections against state action.8Congress.gov. Amdt14.S1.4.1 Overview of Incorporation of the Bill of Rights Before then, free speech, protection against unreasonable searches, and the right to counsel constrained only the federal government. Today nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to state and local governments through the 14th Amendment.9Justia Law. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)
Section 3 does something different. It disqualifies anyone from federal or state office who previously took an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection, unless Congress lifts the bar by a two-thirds vote in each chamber.10Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 Originally aimed at former Confederates, this provision returned to prominence when several states tried to use it to remove a presidential candidate from the ballot. In Trump v. Anderson (2024), the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states cannot enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders or candidates; that responsibility rests with Congress.11Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Anderson, No. 23-719 (2024)
15th Amendment (1870): Voting Rights Regardless of Race
The 15th Amendment prohibits denying or limiting the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.12Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fifteenth Amendment In theory it gave Black men the right to vote nationwide. In practice, states spent the next century evading it with literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and poll taxes. Meaningful enforcement did not arrive until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Courts still turn to the 15th Amendment when evaluating whether voting laws or redistricting plans discriminate on the basis of race.
16th Amendment (1913): Federal Income Tax
The 16th Amendment gave Congress the power to tax income from any source without dividing the burden among the states by population.13Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Sixteenth Amendment It was needed because the Supreme Court had struck down a federal income tax in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895), holding that a tax on income from property was a “direct tax” that had to be apportioned by population.14Library of Congress. Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429 (1895)
The modern federal government runs on the authority this amendment provides. Paycheck withholding, corporate returns, and the April 15 filing deadline all trace back to twelve words allowing Congress to “lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.”
17th Amendment (1913): Direct Election of Senators
The 17th Amendment took the power to choose U.S. senators away from state legislatures and gave it directly to voters.15Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Seventeenth Amendment Under the old system, Senate seats were controlled by whichever faction dominated a state legislature, corruption was widespread, and legislatures sometimes deadlocked so badly that Senate seats sat vacant for months or years. Direct election made senators accountable to ordinary voters.
18th Amendment (1919): Prohibition of Alcohol
The 18th Amendment banned the production, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages throughout the United States.16Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Eighteenth Amendment It proved nearly impossible to enforce and widely unpopular, and it was repealed roughly fourteen years later.
19th Amendment (1920): Women’s Suffrage
The 19th Amendment prohibits denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.17Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Nineteenth Amendment Like the 15th Amendment, it does not affirmatively grant the right to vote; it bars sex as a reason for denying it. The practical result was that roughly half the adult population gained access to the ballot for the first time.
20th Amendment (1933): Shortening the Lame-Duck Period
The 20th Amendment shortened the gap between Election Day and the start of new terms. Under the original schedule, a president elected in November did not take office until March 4. The amendment moved Inauguration Day to January 20 and the start of congressional terms to January 3.18Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twentieth Amendment, Section 1
It also addressed a grim scenario: if a president-elect dies before taking office, the vice president-elect becomes president.19Legal Information Institute. 20th Amendment That provision has never been invoked.
21st Amendment (1933): Repeal of Prohibition
The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th on December 5, 1933, ending Prohibition. Section 2 gave individual states the power to regulate alcohol within their own borders, which is why liquor laws still vary so dramatically from state to state. The 21st is also the only amendment ever ratified by state conventions rather than state legislatures; its own text required that method.20Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twenty-First Amendment
22nd Amendment (1951): Presidential Term Limits
The 22nd Amendment limits the presidency to two elected terms. George Washington set the two-term precedent, and every president followed it for 150 years until Franklin D. Roosevelt won a third term in 1940 and a fourth in 1944. After Roosevelt’s death in office, Congress moved to make the tradition binding.21Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twenty-Second Amendment
The math is slightly more complex for a vice president who inherits the office. If a vice president finishes more than two years of a predecessor’s term, that counts as one of the two allowed terms, and the vice president can run only once on their own. If they serve two years or less of the predecessor’s term, they can still run twice.
23rd Amendment (1961): D.C. Residents Vote for President
The 23rd Amendment gave residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote in presidential elections for the first time. Because D.C. is not a state, its residents had been shut out of the Electoral College entirely. The amendment grants the district a number of electors equal to what it would receive if it were a state, but no more than the least populous state.22Congress.gov. Twenty-Third Amendment – District of Columbia Electors In practice that means three electoral votes. The amendment does not give D.C. voting representation in Congress.
24th Amendment (1964): No Poll Taxes in Federal Elections
The 24th Amendment prohibits requiring payment of a poll tax or any other tax as a condition for voting in federal elections.23Congress.gov. Twenty-Fourth Amendment – Abolition of Poll Tax Poll taxes had been used for decades to keep low-income citizens, disproportionately Black voters in the South, away from the ballot. Two years later, the Supreme Court extended the prohibition to state and local elections in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), ruling that conditioning the franchise on wealth violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
25th Amendment (1967): Presidential Succession and Disability
The 25th Amendment fills several gaps in presidential succession that the original Constitution left ambiguous.24Congress.gov. Amdt25.1 Overview of Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Presidential Vacancy and Disability It has four sections.
Section 1 confirms that the vice president becomes president (not merely “acting president”) when the president dies, resigns, or is removed. Section 2 lets the president nominate a new vice president when that office is vacant, subject to confirmation by a majority of both chambers of Congress. Section 2 was used twice within two years: Gerald Ford replaced Spiro Agnew in 1973, and Nelson Rockefeller replaced Ford in 1974.
Section 3 lets the president voluntarily hand power to the vice president by sending a written declaration to Congress, and reclaim it the same way; presidents have used it before medical procedures requiring anesthesia. Section 4 is the emergency provision: the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can declare the president unable to serve, transferring power to the vice president as acting president. Section 4 has never been invoked.25Legal Information Institute. 25th Amendment
26th Amendment (1971): Voting Age Lowered to 18
The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 for all elections, federal and state.26Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twenty-Sixth Amendment It gained momentum during the Vietnam War, when 18-year-olds could be drafted into combat but could not vote for the leaders sending them. It was ratified in just over three months, faster than any other amendment.
The amendment sets a floor, not a ceiling. Over twenty states and Washington, D.C., let 17-year-olds who will turn 18 by the general election vote in primary elections, with rules that vary by jurisdiction.
27th Amendment (1992): Delayed Congressional Pay Raises
The 27th Amendment has the strangest timeline of any provision in the Constitution. James Madison proposed it in 1789 alongside the amendments that became the Bill of Rights. It fell short of ratification, sat pending for nearly two centuries, and was finally ratified on May 7, 1992.27Congress.gov. Twenty-Seventh Amendment – Congressional Compensation
The rule itself is simple. No law changing the salary of senators or representatives can take effect until after the next election for the House, so voters get a chance to weigh in before their representatives benefit from a raise. There is one wrinkle: automatic cost-of-living adjustments that apply to all federal employees, including members of Congress, take effect on January 1 each year without triggering the waiting period. Congress can block those annual adjustments through a joint resolution and has done so repeatedly in recent years.