Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law at all levels of government. The Fourteenth Amendment was a response to issues affecting freed slaves following the American Civil War, and its passage was bitterly contested. States of the defeated Confederacy were required to ratify it to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954; prohibiting racial segregation in public schools), Loving v. Virginia (1967; ending interracial marriage bans), Roe v. Wade (1973; recognizing federal right to abortion until overturned in 2022), Bush v. Gore (2000; settling 2000 presidential election), Obergefell v. Hodges (2015; extending right to marry to same-sex couples), and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023; prohibiting affirmative action in most college admissions).

The amendment's first section includes the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause broadly defines citizenship, superseding the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that Americans descended from African slaves could not become American citizens. The Privileges or Immunities Clause was interpreted in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) as preventing states from impeding federal rights, such as the freedom of movement. The Due Process Clause builds on the Fifth Amendment to prohibit all levels of government from depriving people of life, liberty, or property without substantive and procedural due process. Additionally, the Due Process Clause supports the incorporation doctrine, by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been applied to the states. The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people, including non-citizens, within its jurisdiction.

The second section superseded the Three-Fifths Compromise, apportioning the House of Representatives and Electoral College using each state's adult male population. In allowing states to abridge voting rights "for participation in rebellion, or other crime," this section approved felony disenfranchisement. The third section disqualifies federal and state candidates who "have engaged in insurrection or rebellion," but in Trump v. Anderson (2024), the Supreme Court left its application to Congress for federal elections and state governments for state elections. The fourth section affirms public debt authorized by Congress while declining to compensate slaveholders for emancipation. The fifth section provides congressional power of enforcement, but Congress' authority to regulate private conduct has shifted to the Commerce Clause, while the anti-commandeering doctrine restrains federal interference in state law.

Section 1: Citizenship and civil rights

Section 1. 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.

Background

The two pages of the Congressionally-signed original of the Fourteenth Amendment in the National Archives, written with iron gall ink on parchment. It was last publicly displayed in 2013. As of 2025, it is stored in the research wing of the archives inside a boxed book of Acts of Congress from its 39th session.

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment formally defines United States citizenship and protects various civil rights from being abridged or denied by any state law or state action. In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's historical context of countering the discriminatory Black Codes of Southern states must be used in its interpretation. Primarily written by Representative John Bingham, Section 1 is the most frequently litigated part of the amendment, and this amendment is the most frequently litigated part of the Constitution.

Citizenship Clause

Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, author of the Citizenship Clause

The Citizenship Clause overruled the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision that African Americans could not become citizens. The clause constitualized the Civil Rights Act of 1866's grant of citizenship to all born within the United States, except the children of foreign diplomats. Compared against European jus sanguinis laws that assign citizenship by one's parents, historians have framed the United States' Citizenship Clause as an extension of the Fourteenth Amendment's egalitarian principles.

Congress' debate over the Citizenship Clause shows explicit rejection of Senator Edgar Cowan's anti-Romani sentiment, affirming that birthright citizenship cannot be revoked from children born to disfavored ethnic minorities. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court confirmed that children born in the United States receive birthright citizenship, regardless of whether their parents are non-citizen immigrants.

In Elk v. Wilkins (1884), the Supreme Court interpreted the Citizenship Clause as granting birthright citizenship to all born within the jurisdiction of the United States and allowing Congress to establish alternative pathways for naturalization. Consistent with the views of the clause's author, Senator Jacob M. Howard, the Supreme Court held that because Indian reservations are not under the federal government's jurisdiction, Native Americans born on such land are not entitled to birthright citizenship. The 1887 Dawes Act offered citizenship to Native Americans who accepted private property as part of cultural assimilation, while the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act offered citizenship to all Native Americans born within the nation's territorial limits.

In Mackenzie v. Hare (1915), the Supreme Court upheld the Expatriation Act of 1907, which dictated that all American women who voluntarily married a foreign alien renounced their American citizenship. Perez v. Brownell (1958) similarly held that Congress could designate voting in foreign elections or draft evasion as renunciations of citizenship. However, in Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) and Vance v. Terrazas (1980), the Supreme Court reversed itself, holding that renunciations of American citizenship must be formally expressed.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14160 to deny birthright citizenship to children with parents of illegal or temporary immigration status. While this topic was not considered by the 39th Congress, nor has it been addressed by the Supreme Court, enforcement of the Executive Order has been blocked as unconstitutional by multiple federal judges. Furthermore, many of the freed slaves whose children were covered by the Citizenship Clause were illegal immigrants brought in violation of the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.

Privileges or Immunities Clause

The Privileges or Immunities Clause was written to provide congressional power of enforcement to the similar Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article Four of the Constitution. In 1823, Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington decided Corfield v. Coryell, interpreting the latter clause as protecting the right to travel, seek habeas corpus, and hold property in multiple states, among other rights. In the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), the Supreme Court rejected arguments that the Privileges or Immunities Clause further incorporated the Bill of Rights against state governments or transferred police power to the federal government. In McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) and Timbs v. Indiana (2019), Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas advocated transferring the incorporation doctrine from the Due Process Clause to the Privileges or Immunities Clause, but this has been criticized as a veiled attempt to restrict the rights of non-citizens within the United States.

Due Process Clause

Due process has not been reduced to any formula; its content cannot be determined by reference to any code. The best that can be said is that, through the course of this Court's decisions, it has represented the balance which our Nation, built upon postulates of respect for the liberty of the individual, has struck between that liberty and the demands of organized society. If the supplying of content to this constitutional concept has of necessity been a rational process, it certainly has not been one where judges have felt free to roam where unguided speculation might take them. The balance of which I speak is the balance struck by this country, having regard to what history teaches are the traditions from which it developed as well as the traditions from which it broke. That tradition is a living thing. A decision of this Court which radically departs from it could not long survive, while a decision which builds on what has survived is likely to be sound. No formula could serve as a substitute, in this area, for judgment and restraint.

—Associate Justice John M. Harlan II in his dissenting opinion to Poe v. Ullman 367 U.S. 497 (1961)

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly applies the Fifth Amendment's similar clause to state governments. In protecting all people against arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property, courts have recognized both procedural and substantive due process. Procedural due process deals with the processes for restraining life, liberty, or property, such as the right to be notified of a hearing by a neutral decision-maker. In comparison, substantive due process involves the government's justification for engaging in those processes. In deciding whether legislation unconstitutionally infringes on one's liberty, most government acts are subject to rational basis review, under which the government must present a legitimate state interest. When the government infringes on fundamental rights, such as racial equality, strict scrutiny requires its actions to instead be narrowly tailored to address a compelling state interest.

The early 20th century has been referred to as the Lochner era for the Supreme Court's embrace of a freedom of contract in cases like Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897) and Lochner v. New York (1905). While that freedom was ultimately curtailed in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), those early cases recognized substantive due process rights within the Due Process Clause. For example, Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) struck down anti-immigrant state education laws as violations of substantive due process.

In 1890, future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and his law partner, Samuel D. Warren II, published "The Right to Privacy" in the Harvard Law Review. While the article only advocated for tort actions to protect one's privacy, the Supreme Court later elevated privacy to a fundamental right, protecting contraceptive sales in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), consensual sex in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges under substantive due process. In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court recognized a substantive due process right to abortion, but that holding was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), which claimed that "a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions."

Incorporation of the Bill of Rights

Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court held in Barron v. Baltimore (1833) that the Bill of Rights only restrained the federal government. However, in Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago (1897), the Supreme Court applied the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause to the eminent domain power of state governments under the Due Process Clause, beginning an ongoing process of incorporation. Legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar has argued that while Congress intended the Fourteenth Amendment to reverse the Barron decision, Representative Bingham expected incorporation to rely on the Privileges or Immunities Clause. The Supreme Court has explicitly rejected incorporation of the Fifth Amendment's Grand Jury Clause and Seventh Amendment, and it has never addressed the Third Amendment.

Equal Protection Clause

Rep. John Bingham of Ohio was the principal author of the Equal Protection Clause.

The Equal Protection Clause was written to constitutionalize the anti-discrimination principles of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, preventing enforcement of the southern states' Black Codes. In Strauder v. West Virginia (1880), the Supreme Court recognized exclusion of African Americans from West Virginian juries as an unconstitutional infringement of this clause, triggering the 1866 law's provision to remove the underlying case to federal court. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), the Supreme Court clarified that race-neutral laws administered in discriminatory ways were similarly unconstitutional.

Whereas the Privileges or Immunities Clause refers to citizens, this clause refers to all people within the jurisdiction of the United States. Accordingly, in Plyler v. Doe (1982), the Supreme Court prohibited state governments from restricting public education on the basis of a child's immigration status. In that decision, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. noted that in Wong Wing v. United States (1896), the Supreme Court had already recognized illegal immigrants as within American jurisdiction for the purposes of due process rights.

While the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause incorporates the Bill of Rights against state governments, the Fifth Amendment's similar clause has been used for reverse incorporation of the Equal Protection Clause against the federal government. In Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), the Supreme Court used this doctrine to prevent the federal government from maintaining segregated public schools in Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court also decided whether foreign corporations are also within the jurisdiction of a state, ruling that a foreign corporation which sued in a state court in which it was not licensed to do business to recover possession of property wrongfully taken from it in another state was within the jurisdiction and could not be subjected to unequal burdens in the maintenance of the suit. When a state has admitted a foreign corporation to do business within its borders, that corporation is entitled to equal protection of the laws but not necessarily to identical treatment with domestic corporations.

In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the court reporter included a statement by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in the decision's headnote:

The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.

This dictum, which established that corporations enjoyed personhood under the Equal Protection Clause, was repeatedly reaffirmed by later courts. It remained the predominant view throughout the twentieth century, though it was challenged in dissents by justices such as Hugo Black and William O. Douglas. Between 1890 and 1910, Fourteenth Amendment cases involving corporations vastly outnumbered those involving the rights of blacks, 288 to 19.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court held that the states could impose racial segregation so long as they provided similar facilities—the formation of the "separate but equal" doctrine. The Court went even further in restricting the Equal Protection Clause in Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), holding that the states could force private actors to discriminate by prohibiting colleges from having both black and white students. By the early 20th century, the Equal Protection Clause had been eclipsed to the point that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. dismissed it as "the usual last resort of constitutional arguments."

Thurgood Marshall served as chief counsel in the landmark Fourteenth Amendment decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

The Court held to the "separate but equal" doctrine for more than fifty years, despite numerous cases in which the Court itself had found that the segregated facilities provided by the states were almost never equal, until Brown v. Board of Education (1954) reached the Court. In Brown the Court ruled that even if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation was inherently harmful to black students and so was unconstitutional. Brown met with a campaign of resistance from white Southerners, and for decades the federal courts attempted to enforce Brown's mandate against repeated attempts at circumvention. This resulted in the controversial desegregation busing decrees handed down by federal courts in various parts of the nation. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), the Court ruled that race could not be the determinative factor in determining to which public schools parents may transfer their children.

In Hernandez v. Texas (1954), the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or "Negro" and extends to other racial and ethnic groups, such as Mexican Americans in this case. In the half-century following Brown, the Court extended the reach of the Equal Protection Clause to other historically disadvantaged groups, such as women and illegitimate children, although it has applied a somewhat less stringent standard than it has applied to governmental discrimination on the basis of race (United States v. Virginia (1996); Levy v. Louisiana (1968)).

The Supreme Court ruled in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) that affirmative action in the form of racial quotas in public university admissions was a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; however, race could be used as one of several factors without violating of the Equal Protection Clause or Title VI. In Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Court considered two race-conscious admissions systems at the University of Michigan. The university claimed that its goal in its admissions systems was to achieve racial diversity. In Gratz, the Court struck down a points-based undergraduate admissions system that added points for minority status, finding that its rigidity violated the Equal Protection Clause; in Grutter, the Court upheld a race-conscious admissions process for the university's law school that used race as one of many factors to determine admission. In Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), the Court ruled that before race can be used in a public university's admission policy, there must be no workable race-neutral alternative. In Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (2014), the Court upheld the constitutionality of a state constitutional prohibition on the state or local use of affirmative action.

Reed v. Reed (1971), which struck down an Idaho probate law favoring men, was the first decision in which the Court ruled that arbitrary gender discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause. In Craig v. Boren (1976), the Court ruled that statutory or administrative sex classifications had to be subjected to an intermediate standard of judicial review. Reed and Craig later served as precedents to strike down a number of state laws discriminating by gender.

Since Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Supreme Court has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as requiring the states to apportion their congressional districts and state legislative seats according to "one man, one vote". The Court has also struck down redistricting plans in which race was a key consideration. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the Court prohibited a North Carolina plan aimed at creating majority-black districts to balance historic under-representation in the state's congressional delegations.

In Pitts v. Black (1984) the Court established that, by refusing the homeless to register to vote, the New York City Board of Elections was in breach of the Equal Protection Clause. As a result, homeless voters were allowed to cast their ballots.

The Equal Protection Clause served as the basis for the decision in Bush v. Gore (2000), in which the Court ruled that no constitutionally valid recount of Florida's votes in the 2000 presidential election could be held within the needed deadline; the decision effectively secured Bush's victory in the disputed election. In League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006), the Court ruled that House majority leader Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting plan intentionally diluted the votes of Latinos and thus violated the Equal Protection Clause.

State actor doctrine

Before United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876) was decided by United States Supreme Court, the case was decided as a circuit case (Federal Cases No. 14897). Presiding of this circuit case was judge Joseph P. Bradley who wrote at page 710 of Federal Cases No. 14897 regarding the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

It is a guarantee of protection against the acts of the state government itself. It is a guarantee against the exertion of arbitrary and tyrannical power on the part of the government and legislature of the state, not a guarantee against the commission of individual offenses, and the power of Congress, whether express or implied, to legislate for the enforcement of such a guarantee does not extend to the passage of laws for the suppression of crime within the states. The enforcement of the guarantee does not require or authorize Congress to perform 'the duty that the guarantee itself supposes it to be the duty of the state to perform, and which it requires the state to perform'.

The above quote was quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629 (1883) and supplemented by a quote from the majority opinion in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876) as written by Chief Justice Morrison Waite:

The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and from denying to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, but it adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another. It simply furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the States upon the fundamental rights which belong to every citizen as a member of society. The duty of protecting all its citizens in the enjoyment of an equality of rights was originally assumed by the States, and it still remains there. The only obligation resting upon the United States is to see that the States do not deny the right. This the Amendment guarantees, but no more. The power of the National Government is limited to the enforcement of this guaranty.

Individual liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, other than the Thirteenth Amendment's ban on slavery, protect not against actions by private persons or entities, but only against actions by government officials. Regarding the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948): "[T]he action inhibited by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment is only such action as may fairly be said to be that of the States. That Amendment erects no shield against merely private conduct, however discriminatory or wrongful." The court added in Civil Rights Cases (1883): "It is State action of a particular character that is prohibited. Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject matter of the amendment. It has a deeper and broader scope. It nullifies and makes void all State legislation, and State action of every kind, which impairs the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, or which injures them in life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or which denies to any of them the equal protection of the laws."

Vindication of federal constitutional rights are limited to those situations where there is "state action" meaning action of government officials who are exercising their governmental power. In Ex parte Virginia (1880), the Supreme Court found that the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment "have reference to actions of the political body denominated by a State, by whatever instruments or in whatever modes that action may be taken. A State acts by its legislative, its executive, or its judicial authorities. It can act in no other way. The constitutional provision, therefore, must mean that no agency of the State, or of the officers or agents by whom its powers are exerted, shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Whoever, by virtue of public position under a State government, deprives another of property, life, or liberty, without due process of law, or denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws, violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State's power, his act is that of the State. This must be so, or the constitutional prohibition has no meaning. [...] But the constitutional amendment was ordained for a purpose. It was to secure equal rights to all persons, and, to insure to all persons the enjoyment of such rights, power was given to Congress to enforce its provisions by appropriate legislation. Such legislation must act upon persons, not upon the abstract thing denominated a State, but upon the persons who are the agents of the State in the denial of the rights which were intended to be secured."

There are however instances where people are the victims of civil-rights violations that occur in circumstances involving both government officials and private actors. In the 1960s, the United States Supreme Court adopted an expansive view of state action opening the door to wide-ranging civil-rights litigation against private actors when they act as state actors (i.e., acts done or otherwise "sanctioned in some way" by the state). The Court found that the state action doctrine is equally applicable to denials of privileges or immunities, due process, and equal protection of the laws.

The critical factor in determining the existence of state action is not governmental involvement with private persons or private corporations, but "the inquiry must be whether there is a sufficiently close nexus between the State and the challenged action of the regulated entity so that the action of the latter may be fairly treated as that of the State itself." "Only by sifting facts and weighing circumstances can the nonobvious involvement of the State in private conduct be attributed its true significance."

The Supreme Court asserted that plaintiffs must establish not only that a private party "acted under color of the challenged statute, but also that its actions are properly attributable to the State." "And the actions are to be attributable to the State apparently only if the State compelled the actions and not if the State merely established the process through statute or regulation under which the private party acted."

The rules developed by the Supreme Court for business regulation are that (1) the "mere fact that a business is subject to state regulation does not by itself convert its action into that of the State for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment," and (2) "a State normally can be held responsible for a private decision only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must be deemed to be that of the State."

Section 2: Apportionment of representatives

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Under Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, the basis of representation of each state in the House of Representatives was determined by adding three-fifths of each state's slave population to its free population. Because slavery (except as punishment for crime) had been abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, the freed slaves would henceforth be given full weight for purposes of apportionment. This situation was a concern to the Republican leadership of Congress, who worried that it would increase the political power of the former slave states, even as such states continued to deny freed slaves the right to vote.

Two solutions were considered:

• reduce the Congressional representation of the former slave states (for example, by basing representation on the number of legal voters rather than the number of inhabitants)
• guarantee freed slaves the right to vote

On January 31, 1866, the House of Representatives voted in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment that would reduce a state's representation in the House in proportion to which that state used "race or color" as a basis to deny the right to vote in that state. The amendment failed in the Senate, partly because radical Republicans foresaw that states would be able to use ostensibly race-neutral criteria, such as educational and property qualifications, to disenfranchise the freed slaves without negative consequence. So the amendment was changed to penalize states in which the vote was denied to male citizens over twenty-one for any reason other than participation in crime. Later, the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted to guarantee the right to vote could not be denied based on race or color.

The effect of Section 2 was twofold:

• Although the three-fifths clause was not formally repealed, it was effectively removed from the Constitution. In the words of the Supreme Court in Elk v. Wilkins, Section 2 "abrogated so much of the corresponding clause of the original Constitution as counted only three-fifths of such persons [slaves]."
• It was intended to penalize, by means of reduced Congressional representation, states that withheld the franchise from adult male citizens for any reason other than participation in crime. This, it was hoped, would induce the former slave states to recognize the political rights of the former slaves, without directly forcing them to do so—something that it was thought the states would not accept.

Enforcement

The first reapportionment after the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment occurred in 1873, based on the 1870 census. Congress appears to have attempted to enforce the provisions of Section 2, but was unable to identify enough disenfranchised voters to make a difference to any state's representation. In the implementing statute, Congress added a provision stating that

should any state, after the passage of this Act, deny or abridge the right of any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, to vote at any election named in the amendments to the Constitution, article fourteen, section two, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the number of Representatives apportioned in this act to such State shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall have to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

A nearly identical provision remains in federal law to this day.

Despite this legislation, in subsequent reapportionments, no change has ever been made to any state's Congressional representation on the basis of the Amendment. Bonfield, writing in 1960, suggested that "[t]he hot political nature of such proposals has doomed them to failure." Aided by this lack of enforcement, southern states continued to use pretexts to prevent many blacks from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the Fourth Circuit case of Saunders v Wilkins (1945), Saunders claimed that Virginia should have its Congressional representation reduced because of its use of a poll tax and other voting restrictions. The plaintiff sued for the right to run for Congress at large in the state, rather than in one of its designated Congressional districts. The lawsuit was dismissed as a political question.

Influence on voting rights

Some legal scholars have argued that Section 2 was implicitly repealed by the Fifteenth Amendment, although other legal scholars contest this claim, and the Supreme Court acknowledged Section 2 in later decisions.

In Minor v. Happersett (1875), the Supreme Court cited Section 2 as supporting its conclusion that the right to vote was not among the "privileges and immunities of citizenship" protected by Section 1.

Why this if it was not in the power of the legislature to deny the right of suffrage to some male inhabitants? And if suffrage was necessarily one of the absolute rights of citizenship, why confine the operation of the limitation to male inhabitants? Women and children are, as we have seen, "persons." They are counted in the enumeration upon which the apportionment is to be made, but if they were necessarily voters because of their citizenship unless clearly excluded, why inflict the penalty for the exclusion of males alone? Clearly, no such form of words would have been elected to express the idea here indicated if suffrage was the absolute right of all citizens.

Women would not achieve equal voting rights throughout the U.S. until the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

In Richardson v. Ramirez (1974), the Court cited Section 2 in holding that Section 1's Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit states from disenfranchising felons.

In Hunter v. Underwood (1985), a case involving disenfranchising black misdemeanants, the Supreme Court concluded that the Tenth Amendment cannot save legislation prohibited by the subsequently enacted Fourteenth Amendment. More specifically the Court concluded that laws passed with a discriminatory purpose are not excepted from the operation of the Equal Protection Clause by the "other crime" provision of Section 2. The Court held that Section 2 "was not designed to permit the purposeful racial discrimination ... which otherwise violates [Section] 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment."

There is debate among legal scholars as to whether Section 2 penalties would apply if a state legislature selected Presidential electors without—or in contravention of the result of—a popular election.

Criticism

Abolitionist leaders criticized the amendment's failure to specifically prohibit the states from denying people the right to vote on the basis of race. In 1937, Senator William Borah proposed a Substitute Constitutional Amendment, that included eliminating provisions that penalized those that supported the Confederacy.

Section 2 protects the right to vote only of adult males, not adult females, making it the only provision of the Constitution to explicitly discriminate on the basis of sex. Section 2 was condemned by women's suffragists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who had long seen their cause as linked to that of black rights. The separation of black civil rights from women's civil rights split the two movements for decades.

Section 3: Disqualification from office for insurrection or rebellion

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Soon after losing the Civil War in 1865, states that had been part of the Confederacy began to send unrepentant former Confederates (such as the Confederacy's former vice president, Alexander H. Stephens) to Washington as senators and representatives. Congress refused to seat them and drafted Section 3 (sometimes called the Insurrection Clause or Disqualification Clause) to constitutionally bar from federal or state office anyone who, having taken an oath as a public official to support the Constitution, "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against that document or lent "aid or comfort" to its enemies. Congress can later remove a disqualification by a two-thirds majority of each house. Southerners strongly opposed the clause, arguing that it would hurt national reunification.

Section 3 does not specify how it is to be invoked, but Section 5 says Congress has enforcement power. Accordingly, Congress enforced Section 3 by enacting Sections 14 and 15 of the Enforcement Act of 1870, the pertinent portion of which was repealed in 1948; there is still a current federal statute (18 U.S.C. § 2383) that was initially part of the Confiscation Act of 1862 (and revised in 1948), disqualifying insurrectionists from any federal office. Based on precedent, Congress would need only a simple majority from both houses to impose a disqualification. Additionally, Congress can impeach a federal officeholder, as it did to disqualify federal judge West Humphreys for insurrection before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Trump v. Anderson (2024), the Supreme Court held that Congress determines eligibility under Section 3 for federal officeholders and states may only bar candidates from state office.

After the amendment's adoption in 1868, disqualification was seldom enforced in the South. At the urging of President Ulysses S. Grant, in 1872 Congress passed the Amnesty Act, which removed the disqualification from all but the most senior Confederates. In 1898, as a "gesture of national unity" during the Spanish–American War, Congress passed another law broadening the amnesty. Congress posthumously lifted the disqualification from Confederate general Robert E. Lee in 1975, and Confederate president Jefferson Davis in 1978. These waivers do not bar Section 3 from being used today.

Between Reconstruction and 2021, Section 3 was invoked only once, being used to block Socialist Party of America member Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin—convicted of violating the Espionage Act for opposing U.S. entry into World War I—from assuming his seat in the House of Representatives in 1919 and 1920. Berger's conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Berger v. United States (1921), after which he was elected to three successive terms in the 1920s; he was seated for all three terms.

January 6 United States Capitol attack

On January 10, 2021, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, formally requested representatives' input as to whether to pursue Section 3 disqualification of outgoing president Donald Trump because of his role in the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack.

On January 11, 2021, Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) and 47 co-sponsors introduced a resolution calling for expulsion, under Section 3, of members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election or incited the January 6 riot. Those named in the resolution included Republican representatives Mo Brooks of Alabama and Louie Gohmert of Texas, who took part in the rally that preceded the riot, and Republican senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who objected to counting electoral votes to certify the 2020 presidential election result.

In January 2022, after Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) declared his intent to run for re-election, a group of North Carolina voters from Cawthorn's district filed suit, alleging that a speech he gave immediately prior to the Capitol attack incited it, and that therefore Section 3 disqualified him from holding federal office. A federal judge ruled that then-representative Madison Cawthorn, who had participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, could not be barred from the ballot as an insurrectionist due to the Amnesty Act of 1872 and entered a preliminary injunction in favor of Cawthorn, citing the Amnesty Act of 1872. However, on May 24, 2022, an appeals court ruled that this law applied only to people who committed "constitutionally wrongful acts" before 1872. A similar challenge, which a federal court declined to block, was filed in March 2022 against Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and heard in April 2022 in Atlanta. A Georgia administrative law judge ruled that Greene was eligible to appear on the 2022 Republican primary ballot in Georgia, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the Fulton County Superior Court affirmed this. Though Greene sued to strike down the state law as unconstitutional, a federal court said her complaint was moot, since this law ultimately did not deny her eligibility for re-election.

Couy Griffin, an Otero County, New Mexico commissioner, was barred from holding public office for life in September 2022 by District Court Judge Francis Mathew, who found his participation as the leader of the Cowboys for Trump group during the attack on the Capitol was an act of insurrection under Section 3. After an appeal process, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his removal from public office and being disqualified for life from ever holding state or local public office again.

On January 2, 2024, a lawsuit seeking to bar Scott Perry (R-PA) from the 2024 ballot via Section 3 was filed.

On January 5, 2024, a lawsuit seeking to disqualify Burt Jones from holding office as Lieutenant Governor of Georgia via Section 3 was dismissed.

2024 presidential eligibility of Donald Trump

By October 30, 2023, lawsuits seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot pursuant to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment via state courts had also been filed. Some legal scholars speculated that a court would be required to make a final determination that Trump was disqualified under Section 3. The U.S. Supreme Court had never ruled on the meaning or application of the insurrection clause. Legal experts expected at least one of these state cases to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

On December 19, 2023, in the case Anderson v. Griswold, the Colorado Supreme Court held that Trump was disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court further held that it would be a "wrongful act" under the Election Code for the Colorado secretary of state to list Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot. The Colorado Republican Party appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on December 28, the Colorado secretary of state announced that Trump would be included on the primary ballot unless the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling. That same day, Maine announced that Trump would not appear on the ballot after its secretary of state concluded that Trump had committed insurrection; the ruling was stayed for judicial review. On January 17, the case was remanded back to the Maine secretary of state for reconsideration after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Colorado case.

On January 3, 2024, Trump appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on the Colorado matter. His attorneys argued that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment should not apply to the presidency because the president is not an Officer of the United States. On January 5, 2024, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the Colorado case, scheduling oral arguments for February 8. On March 4, the Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court decision, holding that Congress determines eligibility under Section 3 for federal officeholders and states may only bar candidates from state office.

U.S. Code provides for objections to be petitioned during the Electoral College vote count arguing that electors cast votes in violation of the Constitution. No objection was made at Trump's certification on January 6, 2025, which would have led to a simple majority vote to disqualification (and the electoral runner-up to be certified as president instead).

Biden disqualification counter-debate

Also on December 19, 2023, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick suggested that President Joe Biden could be removed from the ballot via Section 3 due to his immigration policy having permitted "invasion". Missouri secretary of state Jay Ashcroft threatened to take such action in retaliation. Three Republican members of state Houses of Representatives announced intent to parody the Colorado decision via introducing legislation towards removing Biden as an insurrectionist from their states' ballots. On January 30, 2024, a challenge that cited Section 3 to argue against inclusion of Biden on the Illinois Democratic primary ballot was dismissed by the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Section 4: Validity of public debt

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 4 legitimizes all public debt appropriated by the Congress while rejecting debt associated with emancipation and the Confederacy. In the Gold Clause Cases, the Supreme Court held that Congress' authority over monetary policy allowed it to pass the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, despite the law's practical effect of invalidating gold clauses, which allowed creditors to demand payment in gold. In the 21st century, constitutional law scholars have debated whether Section 4 authorizes the President to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling when Congress is unwilling. In 2011, former President Bill Clinton argued that Section 4 requires the Executive Branch to ignore the debt ceiling in its fulfillment of congressional appropriations.

Section 5: Power of enforcement

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

In the Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), the Supreme Court opined that Section 5 empowered Congress to enforce the Equal Protection Clause on states that refused to repeal their Black Codes. However, the Civil Rights Cases (1883) held that the Fourteenth Amendment does not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals. In Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), the Supreme Court upheld similar legislation under the Commerce Clause instead.

In Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966), the Supreme Court upheld Voting Rights Act of 1965's elimination of literacy tests by claiming that Congress could expand civil rights further than the judiciary. However, City of Boerne v. Flores (1997) rejected application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on state governments because it modified rights under the Free Exercise Clause, rather than protecting existing rights.

Selected Supreme Court cases

Citizenship

• 1884: Elk v. Wilkins
• 1898: United States v. Wong Kim Ark
• 1967: Afroyim v. Rusk
• 1980: Vance v. Terrazas

Privileges or immunities

• 1873: Slaughter-House Cases
• 1875: Minor v. Happersett
• 1908: Twining v. New Jersey
• 1920: United States v. Wheeler
• 1948: Oyama v. California
• 1999: Saenz v. Roe

Incorporation

• 1833: Barron v. Baltimore
• 1873: Slaughter-House Cases
• 1883: Civil Rights Cases
• 1884: Hurtado v. California
• 1897: Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Chicago
• 1900: Maxwell v. Dow
• 1908: Twining v. New Jersey
• 1925: Gitlow v. New York
• 1932: Powell v. Alabama
• 1937: Palko v. Connecticut
• 1947: Adamson v. California
• 1947: Everson v. Board of Education
• 1952: Rochin v. California
• 1961: Mapp v. Ohio
• 1962: Robinson v. California
• 1963: Gideon v. Wainwright
• 1964: Malloy v. Hogan
• 1967: Reitman v. Mulkey
• 1968: Duncan v. Louisiana
• 1969: Benton v. Maryland
• 1970: Goldberg v. Kelly
• 1972: Furman v. Georgia
• 1974: Goss v. Lopez
• 1975: O'Connor v. Donaldson
• 1976: Gregg v. Georgia
• 2010: McDonald v. Chicago
• 2019: Timbs v. Indiana
• 2022: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen

Substantive due process

• 1876: Munn v. Illinois
• 1887: Mugler v. Kansas
• 1897: Allgeyer v. Louisiana
• 1905: Lochner v. New York
• 1908: Muller v. Oregon
• 1923: Adkins v. Children's Hospital
• 1923: Meyer v. Nebraska
• 1925: Pierce v. Society of Sisters
• 1934: Nebbia v. New York
• 1937: West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish
• 1965: Griswold v. Connecticut
• 1973: Roe v. Wade
• 1977: Moore v. City of East Cleveland
• 1990: Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health
• 1992: Planned Parenthood v. Casey
• 1996: BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore
• 1997: Washington v. Glucksberg
• 2003: State Farm v. Campbell
• 2003: Lawrence v. Texas
• 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges
• 2022: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Equal protection

• 1880: Strauder v. West Virginia
• 1886: Yick Wo v. Hopkins
• 1886: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad
• 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson
• 1908: Berea College v. Kentucky
• 1916: The People of the State of California v. Jukichi Harada
• 1917: Buchanan v. Warley
• 1942: Skinner v. Oklahoma
• 1944: Korematsu v. United States
• 1948: Shelley v. Kraemer
• 1954: Hernandez v. Texas
• 1954: Brown v. Board of Education
• 1954: Bolling v. Sharpe
• 1962: Baker v. Carr
• 1967: Loving v. Virginia
• 1971: Reed v. Reed
• 1971: Palmer v. Thompson
• 1972: Eisenstadt v. Baird
• 1973: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez
• 1976: Examining Board v. Flores de Otero
• 1978: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
• 1982: Plyler v. Doe
• 1982: Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan
• 1986: Posadas de Puerto Rico Associates v. Tourism Company of Puerto Rico
• 1996: United States v. Virginia
• 1996: Romer v. Evans
• 2000: Bush v. Gore
• 2003: Grutter v. Bollinger
• 2023: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard

Felon disenfranchisement

• 1974: Richardson v. Ramirez
• 1985: Hunter v. Underwood

Power of enforcement

• 1883: Civil Rights Cases
• 1966: Katzenbach v. Morgan
• 1976: Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer
• 1997: City of Boerne v. Flores
• 1999: Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank
• 2000: United States v. Morrison
• 2000: Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents
• 2001: Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett
• 2003: Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs
• 2004: Tennessee v. Lane
• 2006: United States v. Georgia
• 2012:
• 2013: Shelby County v. Holder
• 2020: Allen v. Cooper
• 2024: Trump v. Anderson

Adoption

Proposal by Congress

In the final years of the American Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction era, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of former slaves freed by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, the latter of which formally abolished slavery. Concerned that southern states would use their African American residents to enlarge their congressional representation while infringing on the civil rights of these freedmen, Republicans sought to discourage such disenfranchisement.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 guaranteed citizenship without regard to race, color, or prior enslavement. The bill also guaranteed equal benefits and access to the law, attacking the discriminatory Black Codes passed by formerly Confederate states to restrict the movement, employment, self-defense, and legal rights of African Americans. Ignoring the urging of moderate Republicans, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill on March 27, 1866. In his veto message, Johnson framed the expansion of citizenship to African Americans as racial discrimination for leaving eleven southern states without congressional representation. Three weeks later, Johnson's veto was overridden and the measure became law. Unsure of their constitutional power to pass and enforce the law, especially if Southern Democrats retook Congress, the experience prompted drafting for a constitutional amendment to protect these civil rights.

Senate and House votes on the Fourteenth Amendment

More than seventy proposals for an amendment were drafted. In an extensive appendix to his dissenting opinion in Adamson v. California (1947), Justice Hugo Black detailed statements made by "those who framed, advocated, and adopted the Amendment." In late 1865, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction proposed an amendment where states would only receive representation for their citizens with voting rights. This amendment passed the House, but it was blocked in the Senate by a coalition of Radical Republicans led by Charles Sumner, who considered the proposal a "compromise with wrong," and Democrats opposed to black rights. Consideration turned to an amendment by Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio, enabling Congress to safeguard "equal protection of life, liberty, and property" of all citizens, but this proposal failed in the House. In April 1866, the Joint Committee forwarded a third version to Congress, which combined the prior proposals, rejected Confederate debt, and addressed voting by ex-Confederates. On May 29, 1866, the House passed this third version as House Resolution 127. The Senate amended Sections 2, 3, and 4, passing the modified version on June 8 by a 33–11 vote (five not voting). The House agreed to the Senate amendments on June 13 by a 138–36 vote (ten not voting). A concurrent resolution requesting the President to transmit the proposal to state governors was passed by both houses of Congress on June 18.

The Radical Republicans lamented that the Fourteenth Amendment only expanded civil rights while leaving political rights unaddressed. Thaddeus Stevens opined, "I find that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it, in many of its parts, to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and the storms of despotism." Abolitionist Wendell Phillips called it a "fatal and total surrender," prompting the Fifteenth Amendment to prohibit government denial of the right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Ratification by the states

  Ratified amendment pre-certification, 1866–1868

  Ratified amendment pre-certification after first rejecting it, 1868

  Ratified amendment post-certification after first rejecting it, 1869–1976

  Ratified amendment post-certification, 1959

  Ratified amendment, withdrew ratification (rescission), then re-ratified. Oregon rescinded ratification post-certification and was included in the official count

  Territories of the United States in 1868, not yet states

Form of the Letter of Transmittal of the Fourteenth Amendment to the several states for its ratification

On June 16, 1866, Secretary of State William H. Seward transmitted the Fourteenth Amendment to state governors for ratification. After state legislatures in every formerly Confederate state except Tennessee refused to ratify it, Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, which conditioned readmission on ratification. The first 28 states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment were:

1. Connecticut: June 30, 1866
2. New Hampshire: July 6, 1866
3. Tennessee: July 19, 1866
4. New Jersey: September 11, 1866 (rescinded ratification February 20, 1868/March 24, 1868; re-ratified April 23, 2003)
5. Oregon: September 19, 1866 (rescinded ratification October 16, 1868; re-ratified April 25, 1973)
6. Vermont: October 30, 1866
7. New York: January 10, 1867
8. Ohio: January 11, 1867 (rescinded ratification January 13, 1868; re-ratified March 12, 2003)
9. Illinois: January 15, 1867
10. West Virginia: January 16, 1867
11. Michigan: January 16, 1867
12. Minnesota: January 16, 1867
13. Kansas: January 17, 1867
14. Maine: January 19, 1867
15. Nevada: January 22, 1867
16. Indiana: January 23, 1867
17. Missouri: January 25, 1867
18. Pennsylvania: February 6, 1867
19. Rhode Island: February 7, 1867
20. Wisconsin: February 13, 1867
21. Massachusetts: March 20, 1867
22. Nebraska: June 15, 1867
23. Iowa: March 16, 1868
24. Arkansas: April 6, 1868
25. Florida: June 9, 1868
26. North Carolina: July 4, 1868 (after rejection December 14, 1866)
27. Louisiana: July 9, 1868 (after rejection February 6, 1867)
28. South Carolina: July 9, 1868 (after rejection December 20, 1866)

After retaking the state legislatures of New Jersey and Ohio, Democrats rescinded their ratifications. On July 20, 1868, Seward certified that if recessions are invalid, the amendment became law with South Carolina's ratification as the 28th state. The following day, Congress rejected New Jersey's recession as "scandalous", declaring the Fourteenth Amendment as part of the Constitution and directing Seward to promulgate it as such, establishing that states cannot rescind their ratification:

29. Alabama: July 13, 1868
30. Georgia: July 21, 1868 (after rejection November 9, 1866)

Upon receiving Georgia's ratification on July 27, Seward officially proclaimed the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption, listing all thirty ratifying states to prevent federal courts from recognizing recession. On October 16, 1868, three months after adoption, Oregon rescinded its ratification, but this had no impact on Fourteenth Amendment's validity. The Fourteenth Amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:

31. Virginia: October 8, 1869 (after rejection January 9, 1867)
32. Mississippi: January 17, 1870
33. Texas: February 18, 1870 (after rejection October 27, 1866)
34. Delaware: February 12, 1901 (after rejection February 8, 1867)
35. Maryland: April 4, 1959 (after rejection March 23, 1867)
36. California: May 6, 1959
37. Kentucky: March 30, 1976 (after rejection January 8, 1867)

Since Ohio and New Jersey re-ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 2003, all states that existed during Reconstruction have ratified the amendment.

See also

• Jus soli
• Equality before the law
• United States labor law

Notes

1. Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 350 (1974); , 457 U.S. 991, 1004 (1982). Cf. , 407 U.S. 163 (1972).
2. Yaretsky, 457 U.S., at 1004; Flagg Bros., 436 U.S., at 166; Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U.S., at 357.
3. Current text of 18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection: "Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."
4. In 2023, Trump's counsel in his New York criminal prosecution argued that the president is an Officer of the United States in an effort to remove that case to federal court.

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Bibliography

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• Goldstone, Lawrence (2011). Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865–1903. Walker & Company. ISBN 978-0802717924. Preview.
• Graber, Mark A. (November 2012). "Subtraction by addition?: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments". Columbia Law Review. 112 (7): 1501–1549. JSTOR 41708157. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015. Pdf.
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Works cited in Trump disqualification debate subsection

• Blackman, Josh; Tillman, Seth Barrett (2021). "Is the President an 'Officer of the United States' for Purposes of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment?" (PDF). New York University Journal of Law & Liberty. 15 (1). New York University School of Law. SSRN 3978095. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
• Rybicki, Elizabeth; Whitaker, L. Paige (December 8, 2020). Counting Electoral Votes: An Overview of Procedures at the Joint Session, Including Objections by Members of Congress (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
• Neale, Thomas H. (October 9, 2020). Presidential Elections: Vacancies in Major-Party Candidacies and the Position of President-Elect (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
• Neale, Thomas H. (October 6, 2020). Contingent Election of the President and Vice President by Congress: Perspectives and Contemporary Analysis (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
• Neale, Thomas H. (July 14, 2020). Presidential Succession: Perspectives and Contemporary Issues for Congress (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved July 19, 2023.
• Preserving Our Institutions: The Continuity of the Presidency (PDF) (Report). Continuity of Government Commission. June 2009. Retrieved May 18, 2023.
• Rossiter, Clinton, ed. (2003). The Federalist Papers. Signet Classics. ISBN 9780451528810.
• Gamboa, Anthony H. (March 13, 2001). Elections: The Scope of Congressional Authority in Election Administration (PDF) (Report). General Accounting Office. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
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Further reading

• Barnett, Randy E. (2011). "Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment". Journal of Legal Analysis. Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 10-06. 3: 165–263. doi:10.1093/jla/3.1.165. SSRN 1538862.
• Bogen, David S. (2003). Privileges and Immunities: A Reference Guide to the United States Constitution. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0313313479. Retrieved March 19, 2013.
• Foner, Eric (2020). The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393358520
• Graber, Mark A. (2011). "Foreword: Plus or minus one: the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments". Maryland Law Review. 71 (1): 12–20. Pdf.

• See also: Symposium: the Maryland Constitutional Law Schmooze special issue of the Maryland Law Review.

• Graber, Mark A. (2023). Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty: The Forgotten Goals of Constitutional Reform after the Civil War. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700635030
• Halbrook, Stephen P. (1998). Freedmen, the 14th Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866–1876. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0275963316.
• tenBroek, Jacobus (June 1951). "Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: Consummation to Abolition and Key to the Fourteenth Amendment". California Law Review. 39 (2): 171–203. doi:10.2307/3478033. JSTOR 3478033.
• McConnell, Michael W. (May 1995). "Originalism and the desegregation decisions". Virginia Law Review. 81 (4): 947–1140. doi:10.2307/1073539. JSTOR 1073539.

• Response to McConnell: Klarman, Michael J. (October 1995). "Response: Brown, originalism, and constitutional theory: a response to Professor Mcconnell". Virginia Law Review. 81 (7): 1881–1936. doi:10.2307/1073643. JSTOR 1073643.

• Response to Klarman: McConnell, Michael W. (October 1995). "Reply: The originalist justification for Brown: a reply to Professor Klarman". Virginia Law Review. 81 (7): 1937–1955. doi:10.2307/1073644. JSTOR 1073644.

External links

• "Amendments to the Constitution of the United States" (PDF). GPO Access. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 18, 2005. Retrieved September 11, 2005. (PDF, providing text of amendment and dates of ratification)
• CRS Annotated Constitution: Fourteenth Amendment
• Fourteenth Amendment and related resources at the Library of Congress
• Congressional Debates of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides a transcript of the debates in Congress.
• Galloway, Russell W. Jr. (1989). "Basic Equal Protection Analysis". Santa Clara Law Review. 29 (1). Retrieved February 8, 2021.