The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution bars the government from housing soldiers in a private home during peacetime without the owner’s consent, and permits it in wartime only in a manner prescribed by law. It is one of the ten amendments ratified in 1791 as the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has never decided a case primarily on its basis.1Congress.gov. Constitution of the United States – Third Amendment Even so, it still does real work in constitutional law as a marker of how far the military can reach into civilian life.
What the Amendment Says
The full text is a single sentence: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”1Congress.gov. Constitution of the United States – Third Amendment That sentence contains two rules.
In peacetime, the ban is absolute. The government cannot place soldiers in a private home unless the homeowner voluntarily agrees. No statute overrides that, and no military officer can order it.
In wartime, Congress can authorize quartering by passing a law setting out how it works. The amendment does not let military commanders make that call on their own, even in the middle of a conflict. Congress has never actually passed such a law, so the wartime exception has stayed theoretical throughout American history.
Why the Framers Included It
The protection grew out of colonial experience with British troops. Parliament’s Quartering Act of 1765 required colonial legislatures to fund barracks and supplies for British soldiers in America, and a tougher 1774 version gave royal governors power to commandeer unoccupied buildings and outbuildings for troop housing. Neither act technically forced soldiers into occupied private homes, but the presence of a standing army billeted throughout colonial towns felt like occupation to many Americans.
Thomas Jefferson listed the practice among the grievances in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.2National Archives. Declaration of Independence: A Transcription When the Bill of Rights was drafted more than a decade later, a prohibition on quartering was placed third, immediately after the rights of conscience and the right to bear arms.
Who Counts as a Soldier, and Whose Home Is Protected
Two cases do most of the work in defining the amendment’s reach.
Engblom v. Carey (1982)
During a 1979 correction officers’ strike in New York, the state called up the National Guard to staff prisons and housed Guard members in residential quarters on prison grounds that had been assigned to the striking officers. Two of those officers sued.
The Second Circuit made three rulings that still frame Third Amendment analysis. National Guard members acting under state authority count as “soldiers.” The amendment protects anyone with a recognized possessory interest in a dwelling, including tenants, not only holders of a deed.3Justia Law. Engblom v Carey, 572 F Supp 44 And the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Third Amendment against the states, so state governments are bound by it, not only the federal government.4Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated – Government Intrusion and Third Amendment
Incorporation matters because the original Bill of Rights only restricted the federal government. Without it, a state governor could in theory order troops into a home and face no Third Amendment challenge. After Engblom, at least within the Second Circuit, states are subject to the same restriction.
Mitchell v. City of Henderson (2013)
In 2011, Henderson, Nevada police officers asked Anthony Mitchell to let them use his home as a tactical position during an operation at a neighbor’s house. Mitchell refused. According to the complaint, officers forced entry, arrested him for obstruction, and occupied the home for several hours.5CaseMine. Mitchell v City of Henderson A federal district court dismissed the Third Amendment claim, holding that municipal police officers are not “soldiers” within the meaning of the amendment. The ruling did not create binding precedent beyond that court, but it points to a real gap: conduct that resembles forced quartering may still fall outside the Third Amendment when the people doing it are not military or a militia-like force.
How the Amendment Shows Up in Modern Law
Even without a docket of its own, the Third Amendment surfaces in two lines of constitutional reasoning.
In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down a state ban on contraceptives and located a right to marital privacy in the combined weight of several amendments. Justice William O. Douglas pointed specifically to the Third Amendment, writing that “its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers ‘in any house’ in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy.”6Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Griswold v Connecticut The amendment became one of the building blocks of the constitutional privacy doctrine that shaped later rulings on personal autonomy.
In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), Justice Robert Jackson used the Third Amendment to illustrate the limits of executive war powers, writing that “even in war time, his seizure of needed military housing must be authorized by Congress.” The amendment stands for the broader idea that decisions about the military belong to the elected legislature, not to the president or to commanders acting alone.
What the Amendment Does Not Cover
The narrow language leaves several situations outside the Third Amendment’s reach.
Police officers and non-military federal agents likely fall outside it, as the Mitchell dismissal suggests. Conduct by those actors that intrudes on a home is usually analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches, not the Third.
Government acquisition of property for military bases, training grounds, or other defense uses is a Fifth Amendment eminent domain question, which requires just compensation. The Third Amendment addresses forcing a homeowner to share living space with soldiers, not the government taking property outright.
Whether military electronic surveillance of a home could count as a form of quartering is an open question that no court has squarely resolved. In Laird v. Tatum (1972), the Supreme Court referred to the Third Amendment as reflecting “a traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs,” without deciding whether surveillance fits inside the prohibition.4Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated – Government Intrusion and Third Amendment
Suing Over a Violation
If a Third Amendment violation did occur, the route to a remedy is uncertain. Claims against federal officials for constitutional violations generally proceed under Bivens, and the Supreme Court has grown steadily more restrictive about recognizing new categories of those suits. In Egbert v. Boule (2022), the Court noted it had declined to extend Bivens eleven consecutive times over four decades. A plaintiff alleging that federal soldiers quartered themselves in a home would face a hard argument that the claim is actionable at all.
State-level conduct like the situation in Engblom can be pursued under 42 U.S.C. ยง 1983, which authorizes suits against state officials who violate constitutional rights. That statute gives a clearer procedural path, though the near-absence of Third Amendment precedent means there is little guidance on what damages a court might award.