Citizenship Clause; Privileges or Immunities Clause; Due Process Clause; Equal Protection Clause

In the founders’ words

• “No State shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases.” James Madison, James Madison, Speech Proposing Amendments, House of Representatives, June 8, 1789 (Annals of Congress 1:448-60) (1789-06-08)
• “To these privileges and immunities, whatever they may be—for they are not and cannot be fully defined in their entire extent and precise nature—to these should be added the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution;” Jacob M. Howard, Sen. Jacob M. Howard, Speech Introducing the Fourteenth Amendment, Senate, May 23, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2764-66) (1866-05-23)
• “This abolishes all class legislation in the states and does away with the injustice of subjecting one caste of persons to a code not applicable to another. It prohibits the hanging of a black man for a crime for which the white man is not to be hanged.” Jacob M. Howard, Sen. Jacob M. Howard, Speech Introducing the Fourteenth Amendment, Senate, May 23, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2764-66) (1866-05-23)
• “But, sir, the first section of the proposed amendment does not give to either of these classes the right of voting. The right of suffrage is not, in law, one of the privileges or immunities thus secured by the Constitution. It is merely the creature of law.” Jacob M. Howard, Sen. Jacob M. Howard, Speech Introducing the Fourteenth Amendment, Senate, May 23, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2764-66) (1866-05-23)
• “The amendment is exactly in the language of the Constitution; that is to say, it secures to the citizens of each of the States all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States. It is not to transfer the laws of one State to another State at all. It is to secure to the citizen of each State all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States in the several States. If the State laws do not interfere, those immunities follow under the Constitution.” John A. Bingham; Giles W. Hotchkiss, House of Representatives, Debate on Bingham's Proposed Amendment, February 28, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.) (1866-02-28)
• “Now, I desire that the very privileges for which the gentleman is contending shall be secured to the citizens; but I want them secured by a constitutional amendment that legislation cannot override.” John A. Bingham; Giles W. Hotchkiss, House of Representatives, Debate on Bingham's Proposed Amendment, February 28, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.) (1866-02-28)
• “But the Constitution limits only the action of Congress, and is not a limitation on the States. This amendment supplies that defect, and allows Congress to correct the unjust legislation of the States, so far that the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all.” Thaddeus Stevens; James A. Garfield, House of Representatives, Debate on the Fourteenth Amendment, May 8, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2459, 2462) (1866-05-08)
• “It is precisely for that reason that we propose to lift that great and good law above the reach of political strife, beyond the reach of the plots and machinations of any party.” Thaddeus Stevens; James A. Garfield, House of Representatives, Debate on the Fourteenth Amendment, May 8, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2459, 2462) (1866-05-08)
• “It is the power in the people, in the whole people of the United States, by express authority of the Constitution to do that by congressional enactment which hitherto they have not had the power to do, and have never even attempted to do; that is, to protect by national law the privileges and immunities of all the citizens of the Republic and the inborn rights of every person within its jurisdiction whenever the same shall be abridged or denied by the unconstitutional acts of any State.” John A. Bingham, House of Representatives, Debate on the Fourteenth Amendment, May 10, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2542) (1866-05-10)
• “This amendment takes from no State any right that ever pertained to it. No State ever had the right, under the forms of law or otherwise, to deny to any freeman the equal protection of the laws or to abridge the privileges or immunities of any citizen of the Republic, although many of them have assumed and exercised the power, and that without remedy.” John A. Bingham, House of Representatives, Debate on the Fourteenth Amendment, May 10, 1866 (Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2542) (1866-05-10)

Public-domain primary sources, quoted word for word and checked against the linked text.

Leading Supreme Court cases

• Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873)
• United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876)
• Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880)
• Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883)
• Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516 (1884)
• Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886)
• Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) · repudiated by Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and later decisions
• Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226 (1897)
• United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)
• Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905) · its liberty-of-contract approach was repudiated in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) and later decisions
• Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908)
• Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923)
• Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)
• Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925)
• Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)
• Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) · overruled by Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)
• Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932)
• De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937)
• Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937) · overruled by Benton v. Maryland (1969)
• West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937)

Cite this page

Values for America Constitution Explorer, https://www.valuesforamerica.com/constitution (text: National Archives transcription, public domain), Amendment XIV, Section 1, https://www.valuesforamerica.com/constitution/amendment-14/section-1

Data: this provision as JSON.