The Fourteenth Amendment is the part of the Constitution Americans rely on most often without knowing it. Ratified on July 9, 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, it defined who is a citizen and, for the first time, put federal limits on how states treat people. Most of the Supreme Court’s landmark civil rights cases, from school desegregation to marriage equality, are Fourteenth Amendment cases.
Why it was written
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, but Southern states quickly passed “Black Codes” that restricted where freed people could work, travel and own property. The Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford had also held that Black Americans could not be citizens at all. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to guarantee equal civil rights, and then wrote the Fourteenth Amendment so that those guarantees could not be undone by a later Congress or ignored by the courts. Congress proposed it in June 1866, and ratification by Southern states became a condition for their readmission to Congress.
Section 1: the core guarantees
Section 1 is the part most people mean when they talk about the Fourteenth Amendment. It contains four clauses:
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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
- The Citizenship Clause overturned Dred Scott and established birthright citizenship: being born on U.S. soil makes you a citizen, with narrow exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats.
- The Privileges or Immunities Clause was meant to protect the rights of national citizenship, but the Supreme Court read it very narrowly in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), and it has done little work since.
- The Due Process Clause bars states from taking anyone’s life, liberty or property without fair procedures, and courts have read it to protect some fundamental rights as well. See what is due process.
- The Equal Protection Clause requires states to treat people in similar situations alike.
Notice the wording: citizenship belongs to citizens, but due process and equal protection belong to any “person.” That is why non-citizens, including people in the country unlawfully, are protected by those two clauses.
Sections 2 through 5
- Section 2: counting people for Congress. It replaced the Constitution’s three-fifths clause, so every person counts fully when House seats are divided among states. It also said a state that denied adult male citizens the vote would lose representation, a penalty that was never enforced.
- Section 3: the insurrection clause. It bars anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution as an official and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office, unless two-thirds of Congress removes the bar. In Trump v. Anderson (2024), the Supreme Court unanimously held that states cannot use it to keep candidates for federal office off the ballot; only Congress can enforce it against them.
- Section 4: the public debt. The validity of the federal debt “shall not be questioned,” and Confederate war debts and claims for freed slaves were void. It resurfaces in debt-ceiling standoffs.
- Section 5: enforcement. Congress can pass “appropriate legislation” to enforce the amendment. The Court has said such laws must be “congruent and proportional” to the constitutional violations they target (City of Boerne v. Flores, 1997).
How the Court tests equal protection
Almost every law treats some people differently from others, so courts use three levels of review:
| Level | Applies to | What the government must show |
|---|---|---|
| Strict scrutiny | Race, national origin, and laws burdening fundamental rights | The law is narrowly tailored to a compelling interest. Few laws pass. |
| Intermediate scrutiny | Sex, and children born outside marriage | The law substantially serves an important interest. |
| Rational basis | Everything else, such as age, income or most economic rules | The law is rationally related to any legitimate purpose. Most laws pass. |
The amendment limits governments, not private people or businesses. Discrimination by a private employer or landlord is covered instead by civil rights statutes passed by Congress and the states.
Cases that shaped it
- United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898): a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who could not become citizens was a citizen by birth.
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation.
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954): overruled Plessy in public schools, holding that segregated schools are inherently unequal.
- Incorporation (1925 onward): through the Due Process Clause, the Court applied most of the Bill of Rights to the states, from free speech (Gitlow v. New York, 1925) to the right to a lawyer (Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963) and the right to bear arms (McDonald v. Chicago, 2010). Before that, the Bill of Rights restricted only the federal government.
- Loving v. Virginia (1967): struck down bans on interracial marriage.
- Reed v. Reed (1971): the first time the Court struck down a law for discriminating against women.
- Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): same-sex couples have a right to marry. See marriage equality and the courts.
- Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022): held that the Due Process Clause does not protect a right to abortion, overruling Roe v. Wade.
- Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023): race-conscious college admissions violate equal protection (and, for private colleges, the Civil Rights Act).
The 2026 birthright citizenship ruling
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14160, which directed federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. to mothers who were in the country unlawfully or on temporary visas, unless the father was a citizen or permanent resident. Lower courts blocked it. After the Supreme Court limited nationwide injunctions in Trump v. CASA (June 2025), challengers brought a class action on behalf of affected babies, and the Court agreed to decide the merits.
On June 30, 2026, in Trump v. Barbara, the Court struck down the order. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for himself and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett and Jackson, held that children born in the U.S. to parents who are here unlawfully or temporarily are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth. The majority said Wong Kim Ark controlled and rejected the government’s argument that the phrase requires parents to owe sole allegiance to, or be domiciled in, the United States. Justice Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful, but only because it conflicts with the federal citizenship statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1401, which Congress could change. Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch dissented.
The ruling settles the constitutional question for now. Ending birthright citizenship for these children would require a constitutional amendment or a new Supreme Court ruling; some officials have called for an amendment, and new executive and legislative proposals have followed, so check the latest developments. The rules on losing citizenship are a separate question, covered in can the government take away your citizenship.
Why it still matters
When people argue about voting maps, affirmative action, police conduct, same-sex marriage, abortion, transgender rights or immigration, they are often arguing about how to read one sentence written in 1866. The words have not changed since 1868; the Court’s reading of them has, sometimes dramatically. Knowing the four clauses of Section 1 and the three levels of scrutiny is enough to follow most of those debates.