What is the 14th Amendment? Citizenship and equal protection

The 14th Amendment is the part of the US Constitution, ratified in July 1868 after the Civil War, that defines who is a citizen and limits what states can do to people. It makes everyone born or naturalized in the United States a citizen, and it forbids any state to deny a person "due process of law" or "the equal protection of the laws". Many of the Supreme Court's best-known rulings rest on it.

In short

• It was written to secure citizenship and equal rights for four million formerly enslaved people, and to overturn the Dred Scott decision of 1857.
• Its first section holds four promises: birthright citizenship, privileges or immunities, due process and equal protection. Most of the Bill of Rights now binds the states through it.
• Its other sections deal with the aftermath of the war: seats in the House, barring former officials who joined the rebellion, war debts, and Congress's power to enforce it.

Why was the 14th Amendment written?

The Civil War ended slavery, but not the question of what freed people were. In Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the Supreme Court had held that Black Americans, free or enslaved, could not be citizens. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and within months several Southern states passed Black Codes that restricted where freed people could work, travel and own property.

Congress answered with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, then wrote its core into the Constitution so that a later Congress or court could not undo it. Congress passed the amendment on 13 June 1866, and it was ratified in July 1868, after Congress made ratification a condition for most former Confederate states to regain their seats. It is the first place the Constitution promises people the equal protection of the laws, and it gave individuals broad rights to assert against their own states, which the original text had restrained only in a few specific ways. The causes of the Civil War explain why those limits were thought necessary.

What does each section say?

The amendment has five sections. The first is the one most people mean when they talk about the 14th Amendment.

Section	What it says, in plain words
1	Everyone born or naturalized in the US and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is a citizen. No state may abridge citizens' privileges or immunities, take anyone's life, liberty or property without due process, or deny anyone equal protection of the laws.
2	House seats are counted by the whole population, ending the rule that counted three-fifths of enslaved people. A state that denies the vote to adult male citizens loses seats in proportion.
3	Anyone who swore an oath to support the Constitution as an official and then joined an insurrection against it may not hold office, unless two-thirds of Congress removes the bar.
4	The Union's war debts are valid; Confederate debts and claims for compensation for freed slaves are void.
5	Congress may pass laws to enforce the amendment.

Section 2's penalty for denying the vote has never been applied. Section 3 was used against former Confederates until Congress lifted most of the bars in 1872. In Trump v. Anderson, on 4 March 2024, the Supreme Court held that states cannot use Section 3 against candidates for federal office; enforcing it against federal officeholders and candidates falls to Congress.

What do due process and equal protection mean?

Due process means a state must follow fair procedures, notice and a hearing, before it punishes someone or takes their property. Courts have also read it to protect some rights from state interference no matter the procedure, a reading called substantive due process. That is how most of the Bill of Rights came to apply to the states: mostly from 1925 on, the Court ruled case by case that the clause "incorporates" rights such as free speech, freedom from unreasonable searches and the right to a lawyer. Before then, the Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government.

Equal protection means a state must treat people in similar situations alike. It doesn't forbid every distinction; a state can set a driving age. But the courts look hardest at laws that sort people by race, and closely at those that sort by sex. The amendment also gave the courts a tool against laws that weighted some votes more than others, which led to the rule of "one person, one vote".

How have courts used it?

The 14th Amendment's meaning has been made mostly in court, and the Supreme Court has read it narrowly at some times and broadly at others. This timeline shows the turns.

Year	Case	What the Court held
1873	Slaughter-House Cases	Read the privileges or immunities clause so narrowly that it has done little since
1896	Plessy v. Ferguson	Upheld racial segregation as "separate but equal"
1898	United States v. Wong Kim Ark	A man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who were not citizens was a citizen by birth
1925	Gitlow v. New York	Began applying the Bill of Rights, starting with free speech, to the states
1954	Brown v. Board of Education	School segregation by race violates equal protection, rejecting "separate but equal" in schools
1964	Reynolds v. Sims	State legislative districts must have roughly equal populations
1967	Loving v. Virginia	Struck down bans on interracial marriage
2015	Obergefell v. Hodges	States must license and recognize same-sex marriages
2026	Trump v. Barbara	Children born in the US to parents here unlawfully or temporarily are citizens

Brown is the clearest example of the amendment's reach. Linda Brown's family and others challenged segregated schools in Topeka, Kansas, and elsewhere. On 17 May 1954 a unanimous Court held that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal", overturning the reasoning of Plessy for public schools.

What is the birthright citizenship case?

An executive order signed on 20 January 2025, Executive Order 14160, directed federal agencies not to recognize as citizens children born in the US whose mother was in the country unlawfully or temporarily and whose father was not a citizen or permanent resident. It was challenged at once and blocked by lower courts. The Supreme Court then agreed to decide whether the order fit the Constitution.

On 30 June 2026, in Trump v. Barbara, the Court held the order unconstitutional, according to the Congressional Research Service's summary. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that the citizenship clause covers nearly all children born on US soil, whatever their parents' immigration status, and read "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in its ordinary legal sense: being under the power of US law, which applies to nearly everyone within the country. The ruling relied on Wong Kim Ark. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, dissented, as did Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed the order was unlawful, but only because it breaks the federal citizenship statute, which Congress could change.

Still argued

The meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was argued for more than a century and still is, although the Court has now ruled. The majority's view, long the prevailing reading, is that the phrase excludes only narrow groups such as children of foreign diplomats and of occupying enemy forces, so nearly everyone born on US soil is a citizen. Justice Thomas's dissent argued that it reaches only children of parents domiciled in the US, which would exclude children of temporary visitors. Justice Alito's read it to mean not subject to any foreign power, and argued that the amendment's framers could not have foreseen today's scale of travel and immigration. The ruling settles the question unless the Constitution is amended; questions the dissents raised may return in other cases.

The 14th Amendment is one of three Reconstruction amendments, with the 13th, which ended slavery, and the 15th, which barred race discrimination in voting. The end of slavery in Texas is remembered each year on Juneteenth. Together they rebuilt what citizenship means in a democracy that had excluded millions from it.

Check yourself

• Without looking back: what problem was the 14th Amendment written to solve, and why did Congress put it in the Constitution rather than only in a law?
• What is the difference between due process and equal protection?
• How did the Court read "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in 2026, and what did the dissents argue instead?

Sources

• 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868) — National Archives
• 14th Amendment — Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) — Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
• Trump v. Anderson, No. 23-719 — Supreme Court of the United States, 2024
• Trump v. Barbara: Supreme Court Holds Birthright Citizenship Executive Order 14160 Unconstitutional — Congressional Research Service, 2026
• Amendment XIV — National Constitution Center