The Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, has five sections. Section 1 makes all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens, and forbids states to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens, deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny any person the equal protection of the laws. Section 2 changed apportionment of House seats, Section 3 bars from office certain officials who engaged in insurrection, Section 4 guarantees the public debt, and Section 5 gives Congress enforcement power.

It is the most litigated part of the Constitution. Through the due process clause, the Supreme Court has applied most of the Bill of Rights to the states, a process called incorporation. The equal protection clause was read narrowly in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which upheld segregation, but Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 held segregated schools unconstitutional. Later cases applied equal protection to sex discrimination, legislative districting under the one person, one vote rule, same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, and race-conscious admissions, which the Court barred in 2023.

The citizenship clause, which the Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898 held covers children born in the United States to noncitizen parents, became a major dispute in 2025 when an executive order sought to deny citizenship to children of parents who are unlawfully present or in the country temporarily. Lower courts blocked the order, and on June 30, 2026, in Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court held 6 to 3 that the citizenship clause covers children born on U.S. soil to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present, invalidating the order. Section 3 drew attention in Trump v. Anderson in 2024, when the Court held that only Congress can enforce it against federal candidates. Supporters of broad readings call the amendment a second founding, while critics argue courts have stretched its terms beyond their original meaning.