The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, defines who is a United States citizen and forbids every state from denying any person due process of law or the equal protection of the laws. A fourteenth amendment summary really comes down to five sections: Section 1 sets out citizenship and the core individual rights states must respect; Sections 2 through 4 cleaned up specific problems left by the Civil War; and Section 5 gives Congress the power to enforce all of it through legislation.1National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)
Almost every constitutional fight you read about — over segregation, marriage, policing, abortion, voting, gun rights applied to states — traces back to one of the four clauses in Section 1. That is where to start.
The Citizenship Clause
Section 1 opens by declaring that anyone born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, is a citizen of both the country and the state where they reside.1National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868) Before 1868, the Constitution never defined citizenship at all. That silence let the Supreme Court rule in 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, that people of African descent were “not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution.”2National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) The Citizenship Clause wiped that ruling off the books with an objective test: where you were born, or whether you were naturalized.
The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” carves out a narrow exception, covering people who don’t owe allegiance to the United States, which in practice has meant children of foreign diplomats accredited here.3Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment The clause also creates dual citizenship: you are a citizen of the United States and of your state at the same time, so no state can create second-class residents by refusing to recognize someone as one of its own.
One boundary worth naming. The clause does not automatically extend to every U.S. territory. People born in American Samoa and Swains Island are classified as non-citizen U.S. nationals rather than citizens.4U.S. Department of State. Acquisition by Birth in American Samoa and Swains Island In Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, citizenship comes from federal statute rather than from the amendment itself.
The Privileges or Immunities Clause
The next phrase in Section 1 bars states from making or enforcing any law that abridges “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” On paper this reads like a sweeping guarantee. In practice, it has done very little work since 1873, when the Supreme Court decided the Slaughter-House Cases.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Slaughterhouse Cases The Court read the clause to protect only a narrow set of rights tied to national citizenship — access to federal ports, the right to run for federal office, protections on the high seas — and left the broader civil liberties of property, contract, and personal freedom to the states.6Constitution Annotated. Privileges or Immunities of Citizens and the Slaughter-House Cases
That reading forced later courts to build individual-rights protections through the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses instead. The one area where the clause still has some force is the right to travel between states. In Saenz v. Roe (1999), the Supreme Court held that states cannot impose residency-based waiting periods that punish people for moving, because new residents must have “the same privileges and immunities as long-standing citizens of the state.”7Justia. Saenz v. Roe
The Due Process Clause
The Due Process Clause is where most of the amendment’s modern power lives. It provides that no state may “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”3Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment Note the word “person.” This clause protects everyone within a state’s borders, citizen or not. Courts have split it into two doctrines.
Procedural Due Process
Before a state takes your life, freedom, or property, it has to follow fair procedures. At minimum, that means notice of what the government intends to do and a meaningful chance to be heard by an impartial decision-maker.8Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment – Section 1 – Rights Property seizures, license revocations, and terminations of public benefits all trigger some form of hearing. How much process you get depends on what is at stake and how likely the government is to get the decision wrong, but the baseline is the same: the state cannot act against you in secret.
Substantive Due Process
Some rights are treated as so fundamental that the government cannot take them away no matter how fair the procedure is. These are rights the Supreme Court has described as deeply rooted in American history and tradition, and they include decisions about contraception, marriage, and certain intimate conduct.9Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.6.1 Overview of Substantive Due Process In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court called the right to marry “a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person” and held that same-sex couples cannot be excluded from it under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.10Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Obergefell v. Hodges
How the Bill of Rights Reaches the States
Originally, the Bill of Rights only restrained the federal government. A state could, in theory, restrict speech or conduct warrantless searches without violating the Constitution. The Due Process Clause changed that by giving courts a mechanism to apply Bill of Rights protections against state and local governments. Lawyers call this incorporation.
It started with Gitlow v. New York (1925), where the Supreme Court assumed that the freedoms of speech and press are protected against state interference through the Due Process Clause.11Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Gitlow v. New York Over the following decades, protections were incorporated one by one: free exercise of religion, protection against unreasonable searches, the right to counsel in criminal cases, and others. In 2010, McDonald v. City of Chicago incorporated the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms against the states.12Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. McDonald v. City of Chicago
Not everything has been incorporated. The Supreme Court has never applied the Third Amendment’s ban on quartering soldiers, the Fifth Amendment’s grand jury requirement, or the Seventh Amendment’s right to a civil jury trial against the states.13Congress.gov. Application of the Bill of Rights to the States Through the Fourteenth Amendment The grand jury exception matters in practice — states are free to charge crimes through a preliminary hearing before a judge instead.
The Equal Protection Clause
The last clause of Section 1 requires every state to provide “equal protection of the laws” to all persons within its jurisdiction.14Cornell Law Institute. Amendment XIV This does not mean every law must treat everyone identically. Governments classify people constantly — by income for taxes, by age for driving, by occupation for licensing. The clause asks whether the classification is justified. Courts answer that question using three levels of scrutiny.
Under rational basis review, the lowest level, the government only needs to show that the classification is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.15Constitution Annotated. Equal Protection and Rational Basis Review Generally Different licensing rules for electricians and plumbers pass easily. Very few laws are struck down at this level.
Under intermediate scrutiny, which applies to sex-based classifications, the government must show that the law serves an important governmental objective and is substantially related to achieving it.16Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.8.8.3 General Approach to Gender Classifications A state law excluding women from certain jobs would fail without a genuinely important reason tied directly to the classification.
Under strict scrutiny, which applies to classifications based on race or national origin, the government must prove that the law serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored — meaning no less restrictive alternative could accomplish the same goal.17Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.8.4.2 Modern Doctrine on Appropriate Scrutiny The standard applies whichever racial group is burdened or benefited. Very few laws survive it.
The clause’s most famous application is Brown v. Board of Education (1954), where the Supreme Court unanimously held that racially segregated public schools are “inherently unequal” and violate the Fourteenth Amendment.18Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka That decision overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine that had permitted legalized segregation for nearly sixty years.
One important limit: the clause applies to state action, not private conduct. A private business that discriminates against customers is not violating the Fourteenth Amendment, though it may be violating federal civil rights statutes. Any entity acting under state authority, receiving state funding, or exercising a state-delegated function must provide equal treatment.
Sections 2, 3, and 4
The middle three sections addressed specific problems left by the Civil War. They are less litigated today than Section 1, but a couple have resurfaced in modern debates.
Section 2 replaced the Three-Fifths Compromise by requiring that representatives be apportioned based on the whole number of persons in each state.19Constitution Annotated. U.S. Constitution Amendment 14 Section 2 – Apportionment of Representation Under the original Constitution, enslaved people had been counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of allocating House seats, which gave slaveholding states extra political power while giving enslaved people no rights at all.
Section 3 bars anyone who previously swore an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion from holding federal or state office. Aimed originally at former Confederate officials, the disqualification is not permanent — a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress can lift it.20Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 – Disqualification from Holding Office The provision has drawn renewed attention in recent years.
Section 4 declares that the public debt of the United States “shall not be questioned,” while voiding all debts incurred by the Confederacy and prohibiting compensation to former slaveholders for the loss of enslaved people.21Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment Section 4 – Public Debt The “shall not be questioned” language has resurfaced in modern debates about the federal debt ceiling, though courts have not definitively ruled on whether it prevents Congress from allowing a default.
How the Amendment Gets Enforced
Section 5 gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment “by appropriate legislation.”22Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment Section 5 That authority is the foundation of federal civil rights law, including the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
Congressional power under Section 5 is broad but not unlimited. In City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), the Supreme Court held that enforcement legislation must be “congruent and proportional” to the constitutional violation it aims to prevent or remedy.23Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. City of Boerne v. Flores Congress can create mechanisms to enforce rights the Court has already recognized and can enact preventive measures aimed at stopping violations. What Congress cannot do is use Section 5 to expand the definition of constitutional rights beyond what the judiciary has established.
For an individual whose rights have been violated, the enforcement tool that actually matters is 42 U.S.C. § 1983. It allows anyone whose constitutional rights were violated “under color of” state law to sue the responsible official for damages.24Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1983 – Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights If a police officer uses excessive force, a school official suppresses student speech, or a city agency denies a benefit without a hearing, the affected person can bring a Section 1983 claim in federal court. Statutes of limitations vary by state, typically two to four years. The suit has to be against a person acting under state authority; states themselves are not “persons” for Section 1983 purposes and cannot be sued directly under it.