Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes national citizenship for people born or naturalized in the United States and requires states to provide due process and equal protection.

Citizenship Clause: The Fourteenth Amendment clause granting United States citizenship to people born or naturalized in the country and subject to its jurisdiction. It establishes the amendment’s national rule of birthright citizenship.
Civil Rights Act of 1866: A federal law granting citizenship and equal civil rights to people born in the United States, excluding many Indigenous people. Its protections and constitutional vulnerability helped spur the amendment.
Incorporation of the Bill of Rights: The constitutional doctrine applying most protections in the Bill of Rights to state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. Due process became the route for extending federal rights guarantees to the states.
Birthright citizenship in the United States: United States citizenship acquired by birth, principally through birth within the country under the Fourteenth Amendment. The amendment constitutionalized citizenship by birth on national soil.
Equal Protection Clause: The Fourteenth Amendment clause requiring states to provide equal protection of the laws. It is the amendment’s central textual guarantee against state discrimination.
Dred Scott v. Sandford: The 1857 Supreme Court decision holding that Black people descended from enslaved people could not be United States citizens. The Citizenship Clause repudiated its denial of national citizenship to Black Americans.
Brown v. Board of Education: The 1954 Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause. It applied the clause to invalidate legally mandated school segregation.
Selective Incorporation: The process by which the Supreme Court has applied particular Bill of Rights protections to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. This doctrine transformed the amendment into a conduit for national rights protections.
Due Process Clause: A constitutional guarantee that government may not deprive people of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The amendment applies this protection against state governments.
Reconstruction Acts: Federal laws enacted in 1867 that divided the former Confederacy into military districts and set conditions for readmission to the Union. They tied Southern state governments’ restoration to ratification of the amendment.

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