The Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth Amendment provides that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to its jurisdiction, and gives Congress power to enforce it by appropriate legislation. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had freed enslaved people only in Confederate areas as a war measure, so supporters sought a permanent constitutional ban. The Senate passed the amendment in April 1864, the House in January 1865, and it was ratified on December 6, 1865.

It was the first of the three Reconstruction amendments and the first amendment to expand federal power over the states. Congress used its enforcement power to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, guaranteeing freed people the right to make contracts and own property, and later laws banning peonage, a form of debt servitude. In Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. in 1968, the Supreme Court held that Congress may ban private racial discrimination in housing as a badge and incident of slavery, and federal law uses the amendment today against human trafficking and forced labor.

The punishment clause remains debated. After Reconstruction, Southern states used vagrancy laws and convict leasing to force Black Americans into unpaid labor, practices historians describe as slavery by another name. Prison labor remains legal under the clause, and several states have amended their constitutions since 2018 to remove similar exceptions. Proposals to amend the federal clause have been introduced in Congress, while opponents argue prison work programs serve rehabilitation and public needs.