- The 14th Amendment is central to our modern legal landscape.
Decisions in cases like Brown v Board of Education,
Roe v Wade, even Bush v Gore,
and the now-overturned Roe v Wade
all have a legal basis in the 14th Amendment.
So, how can a single constitutional amendment
apply to so much consequential legal precedent?
Well, like a lot of things,
it's a matter of who's doing the interpreting.
Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment was one of
three Reconstruction-era constitutional additions
aimed at abolishing slavery
and establishing legal and civil rights
to formerly enslaved Black Americans.
Divided into five sections, Section 1's language
has been central to issues beyond slavery,
including desegregation, voting rights, abortion rights,
LGBTQ protections, and beyond.
First, there's the citizenship clause,
which establishes all who are born
or naturalized in the US as citizens.
In practice, this nullified the notorious 1857 Dred Scott
v Sandford decision,
which had excluded the enslaved, formerly enslaved,
and their descendants from enjoying
basic constitutional rights and protections.
So, how does that all play into today's politics?
Look no further than former president Donald Trump,
who, as recently as 2019,
argued for an end to birthright citizenship
as protected by the 14th amendment.
- Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant children
are made automatic citizens every year
because of this crazy policy.
- Next, the privileges and immunities clause,
which provides that states can't make or enforce laws
that "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens".
That scope was considerably narrowed in 1873
thanks to the landmark Slaughterhouse Cases decision,
which held that the clause extended only
to the explicitly written, enumerated rights included
in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
Those rights, the majority argued,
applied on the federal and not state level.
In practice, that meant states were able to pass and enforce
discriminatory laws typical in the Jim Crow-era South.
That narrow ruling leads us to the due process
and equal protection clauses;
the interpretations of which have been used
extend a series of unenumerated or inferred rights
not explicitly coded in the Constitution,
on both the state and federal level.
That debate on whether a right needs to be explicitly written
and not inferred in the Constitution sets us up
for many of the contentious legal debates of today.
First, due process,
which echoes a sentiment so important to the framers,
they included it twice in the Constitution,
establishing that the state "can't deprive a person of life,
liberty, or property, without the due process of law".
Next, the equal protection clause,
which establishes a state can't deny an individual equal rights,
mandating equal treatment under the law.
The number of cases decided on these grounds is vast.
In Brown v Board of Education,
the Court unanimously found racially segregated schools
to be inherently unequal,
thus violating the equal protection of Black Americans.
In Bush v Gore, the Court found that
a lack of standard vote-counting methods across Florida
violated the equal protection of voters,
effectively ending the recount.
In Obergefell v Hodges,
it argued that prohibiting marriage
among same-sex couples violated their due process
and equal protection by denying them
a right available to heterosexual couples.
And, in Roe v Wade, the Court found that a right
to privacy under the due process clause
protected a woman's right to choose
whether to have an abortion.
The Court's follow-up case, Planned Parenthood v Casey,
touched upon equal protection.
It's those interpretations that were ultimately struck down
in a majority opinion authored by Supreme Court
justice Samuel Alito on the pending Dobbs
v Jackson Women's Health Organization case.
At its center, the opinion suggests
that a "loose interpretation of the 14th amendment was incorrect
because abortion is neither implicitly mentioned
in the Constitution or entrenched in our history
or legal traditions".
Now that Roe has been overturned,
many worry future reversals of "settled precedent,"
like same-sex marriage and voting rights,
might be challenged next.