The Fourteenth Amendment binds every state and local government to the Constitution’s core guarantees of citizenship, due process, and equal protection, and it is the provision the Supreme Court reaches for most often when deciding whether a state law violates individual rights. What the Fourteenth Amendment does, in practical terms, is four things at once: it defines who is a citizen at birth, it makes most of the Bill of Rights enforceable against the states, it requires fair procedures and protects certain fundamental liberties from state interference, and it forbids states from treating people unequally without adequate justification. Ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, it shifted the balance of power between the federal government and the states and remains the most heavily litigated part of the Constitution.1National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights
Citizenship at Birth
The amendment opens by settling who is a citizen: “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.”1National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights That language overruled the pre-war Dred Scott decision, which had held that Black Americans could never be citizens.
In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court read the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” broadly. A child born on U.S. soil to foreign-citizen parents is a U.S. citizen at birth, so long as the parents are not serving in a diplomatic or official capacity for a foreign government. The only other exceptions the Court recognized were children born during a hostile military occupation and, at the time, children of certain Native American tribes. The Court held that the amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory” and covers “the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.”2Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. United States v. Wong Kim Ark
Making the Bill of Rights Apply to the States
The original Bill of Rights limited only the federal government. A state could theoretically restrict speech or conduct unreasonable searches without violating the Constitution. That changed through selective incorporation, a doctrine the Supreme Court built on the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Rather than declaring all ten amendments binding on the states at once, the Court examines each right individually and decides whether it is fundamental enough to apply at the state level.3Constitution Annotated. Modern Doctrine on Selective Incorporation of Bill of Rights
The test asks whether a particular right is deeply rooted in American history and essential to a system of ordered liberty. By now, nearly every significant protection has been incorporated. The First Amendment’s protections for speech, press, religion, and assembly all apply to states. So does the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, incorporated through McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, along with the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, among others.3Constitution Annotated. Modern Doctrine on Selective Incorporation of Bill of Rights
The practical result is enormous. When a local police officer conducts an illegal search or a state university punishes a student for protected speech, the constitutional challenge runs through the Fourteenth Amendment. Incorporation turned the Bill of Rights into a nationwide floor for individual liberty.
Procedural Due Process
The Due Process Clause forbids any state from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” One side of that guarantee is procedural: before the government takes something from you, it has to follow fair procedures. At a minimum, that means notice of what the government intends to do and a meaningful chance to be heard before a neutral decision-maker.4Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.5.4.3 Notice of Charge and Due Process
The Court has said notice must be “reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections.”4Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.5.4.3 Notice of Charge and Due Process How much process is required depends on context. Revoking a professional license calls for more protection than towing an illegally parked car. Courts weigh the importance of the individual interest, the risk of an erroneous decision under existing procedures, and the government’s administrative burden. When the government skips these steps and takes property or restricts freedom, the action is constitutionally defective regardless of whether the underlying decision might otherwise have been justified.
Substantive Due Process and Unenumerated Rights
The Due Process Clause does more than police procedures. The Court also uses it to protect certain fundamental rights that appear nowhere in the Constitution’s text. This doctrine, called substantive due process, asks whether a law restricts a liberty so deeply rooted in American history and tradition that no government interest can justify the intrusion.
The modern framework comes from Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), which requires two steps: a careful description of the right at issue, and an inquiry into whether that right is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and essential to the country’s “scheme of ordered liberty.”5Legal Information Institute. Substantive Due Process General Approach Laws that burden a recognized fundamental right face the most demanding judicial review. Laws affecting ordinary economic or social interests need only a rational connection to a legitimate government purpose.
Several of the Supreme Court’s most consequential decisions rest on this doctrine. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a state ban on contraceptives for married couples, finding that several amendments create “zones of privacy” the government cannot invade. In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court held that the right to marry is “a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person” and that same-sex couples cannot be denied that right under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.6Legal Information Institute. Obergefell v. Hodges
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the Court overruled Roe v. Wade and held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, applying the “deeply rooted” test strictly to conclude that no such historical tradition existed. The majority stated that “nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” distinguishing abortion from contraceptive access, private sexual conduct, and same-sex marriage on the ground that abortion involves the destruction of potential life while those other rights do not.7Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization For now, the rights recognized in Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell remain intact.
Equal Protection and the Three Tiers of Review
The Equal Protection Clause prohibits any state from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” When the Court evaluates a law that treats different groups of people differently, it applies one of three standards of review depending on who is being classified and why.
- Strict scrutiny applies when a law classifies people by race, national origin, religion, or alienage. The government must prove the law serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve it. Very few laws survive this standard.8Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College
- Intermediate scrutiny applies to classifications based on gender or legitimacy. The government must show an exceedingly persuasive justification and a substantial connection between the classification and an important government objective.
- Rational basis review applies to everything else, such as economic regulations or age-based distinctions. The challenger must prove the law has no rational connection to any legitimate government purpose. Most laws pass this test.
The tier system exists because not every distinction a government draws is equally suspicious. Sorting taxpayers into income brackets is routine governance; sorting citizens by race triggers the country’s deepest constitutional anxieties. The framework forces courts to match their level of skepticism to the nature of the classification.
The Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard shows how strict scrutiny operates in practice. The Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, holding that they violated the Equal Protection Clause. The majority concluded that the programs lacked “sufficiently measurable” goals, used racial categories that were “overbroad, arbitrary or undefined, or underinclusive,” and failed to articulate a meaningful connection between using race and achieving their stated educational objectives.8Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College The decision effectively ended the approach to affirmative action universities had followed since Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, though the Court stopped short of formally overruling Grutter.
The Amendment Restricts Government, Not Private Conduct
The Fourteenth Amendment only restricts government conduct. A private company can refuse to let you speak on its property without raising a constitutional issue. The Supreme Court has stated that the amendment “erects no shield against merely private conduct, however discriminatory or wrongful.”9Legal Information Institute. State Action Doctrine This limitation, known as the state action doctrine, means the first question in any Fourteenth Amendment case is whether the defendant is a government actor.
The line between public and private is not always obvious. The Court has identified limited situations where a private entity is treated as a state actor. Under the public function doctrine, a private party performing a role traditionally and exclusively reserved to the government can be held to constitutional standards; the classic example is Marsh v. Alabama (1946), where a company-owned town was treated as a municipality and its residents received the same First and Fourteenth Amendment protections as residents of any other town.10Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Marsh v. Alabama Government compulsion attributes a private action to the state when officials order or coerce it. Joint action doctrine applies when a private entity and a government body are so intertwined in a particular activity that the private conduct is effectively governmental.11Constitution Annotated. Amdt1.7.2.4 State Action Doctrine and Free Speech
Outside these narrow exceptions, constitutional challenges to private conduct fail. Federal civil rights statutes like Title II of the Civil Rights Act fill some of that gap by prohibiting discrimination in private businesses, but those protections come from congressional legislation rather than the amendment itself.
Disqualification from Office Under Section 3
Section 3 bars anyone from holding federal or state office who previously took an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Congress can remove the disqualification by a two-thirds vote of each chamber.12Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment Section 3
Originally aimed at former Confederate officials, Section 3 was the subject of major litigation in 2024. In Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court ruled that states lack the constitutional power to enforce Section 3 against candidates for federal office. The Court held 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.” States retain authority to disqualify candidates from state offices under Section 3, but only Congress can create the mechanism for disqualifying federal officeholders and candidates.13Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Trump v. Anderson
Congressional Enforcement Power Under Section 5
Section 5 gives Congress the “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”14Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment Section 5 This is the authority behind major civil rights legislation, including the Voting Rights Act and parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Supreme Court has placed a significant limit on how far Congress can go, however.
In City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), the Court struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as applied to states, holding that Congress had overstepped its enforcement power. The key rule: there must be “a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end.” Congress can pass laws to remedy or prevent constitutional violations, but it cannot use Section 5 to redefine what the Constitution means. That power belongs to the courts.15Legal Information Institute. City of Boerne v. Flores The Court retains the final word on what the Fourteenth Amendment protects, and Congress can only build enforcement tools that stay proportional to those judicially recognized rights.
How People Actually Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights
Constitutional rights matter little without a way to enforce them. The primary vehicle for individuals bringing Fourteenth Amendment claims is 42 U.S.C. ยง 1983, a federal statute that creates a right to sue any person who, acting under authority of state law, deprives someone of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.”16Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1983 – Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights A successful plaintiff can recover money damages, obtain a court order stopping the unconstitutional conduct, or both.
Section 1983 lawsuits cover a wide range of situations: excessive force by police, unconstitutional conditions in jails, public school officials punishing protected speech, or a city zoning board acting without due process. The defendant must be a state or local government actor or someone working under state authority. Federal officials are not covered by Section 1983; separate legal doctrines govern federal constitutional violations.
Because Section 1983 has no built-in statute of limitations, courts borrow the deadline from the state where the violation occurred, using that state’s personal injury filing period. In practice, this gives most plaintiffs somewhere between two and three years to file suit, though the exact window varies by jurisdiction. Missing the deadline forfeits the claim entirely, regardless of how clear the constitutional violation may be.