Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment: Citizenship, Due Process and Equal Protection

The Fourteenth Amendment defines citizenship, bars states from denying due process and equal protection, and gives Congress power to enforce its guarantees.

4Conservative Editors · Published November 8, 2026

The text

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment.

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.

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.

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.

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 5.

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

Note: The words "twenty-one years of age" in section 2 were changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.

Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment.

In plain English

The Fourteenth Amendment is the longest of the amendments after the Bill of Rights and the source of much modern constitutional law.

Section 1. It opens by defining citizenship: all persons born or naturalized in the United States "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are citizens of the United States and of their state. It then forbids any state to abridge the "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," to deprive any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," or to deny any person "the equal protection of the laws."

Section 2. It replaced the three-fifths clause: representation is by the whole number of persons, with a reduction if a state denies the vote to male citizens of voting age.

Section 3. It bars from office those who took an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion, unless Congress removes the disability by a two-thirds vote.

Section 4. It confirms the public debt and voids Confederate debts and claims for the loss of slaves.

Section 5. Congress may enforce the Amendment "by appropriate legislation."

The words "twenty-one years of age" in Section 2 were changed by the 26th Amendment.

What the Founders said

The Amendment was written in 1866, long after the Founding, but its authors, including Representative John Bingham and Senator Jacob Howard, drew on the Declaration's principle of equality and on the Bill of Rights. Bingham spoke of applying the Bill of Rights to the states. Howard's 1866 speech introducing the Amendment in the Senate said the privileges and immunities clause would include the first eight amendments.

The need arose from the Black Codes enacted in the former Confederate states after the Civil War, which restricted freedmen's rights to own property, testify in court and bear arms. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 first, and then the Amendment, partly to remove doubts about its constitutionality.

The Citizenship Clause answered Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had held that Black Americans could not be citizens.

How the courts have read it

  • The Slaughter-House Cases (1873): the Court read the Privileges or Immunities Clause so narrowly that it became nearly a dead letter.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): "separate but equal" accommodations satisfied equal protection; overruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
  • United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898): a child born in the United States to Chinese parents is a citizen under the Citizenship Clause.
  • Lochner v. New York (1905): the Court read substantive due process to protect liberty of contract.
  • Gitlow v. New York (1925) and later decisions: provisions of the Bill of Rights were "incorporated" against the states through the Due Process Clause.
  • Brown v. Board of Education (1954): school segregation violates equal protection.
  • McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010): the Second Amendment applies to the states.
  • Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023): race-conscious admissions programs violate equal protection.
  • Trump v. Anderson (2024): states may not enforce Section 3 against federal candidates; enforcement is a matter for Congress.

Why it matters now

The Fourteenth Amendment is the foundation of modern American equality law. Its central idea is conservative in the best sense: the same law for every person, enforced by the courts and by Congress. Justice Harlan's 1896 dissent in Plessy, that the Constitution "is color-blind," is a statement of that principle.

Two long debates run through it. One concerns incorporation: how the Bill of Rights came to bind the states, and whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause, instead of Due Process, was the proper vehicle. Justice Thomas has argued for the former. The other is the reach of "substantive due process," which conservatives criticize as an invitation for judges to find rights in a clause that speaks of procedure. The Court's decision in Dobbs (2022) reflected that criticism.

The Citizenship Clause also remains in debate, notably in the question of birthright citizenship and the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." The text, history and Wong Kim Ark are the proper starting points for any serious discussion.

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