The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War.
The meaning of the Equal Protection Clause has been the subject of much debate, and inspired the well-known phrase "Equal Justice Under Law". This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that helped to dismantle racial segregation. The clause has also been the basis for Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriages, along with many other decisions rejecting discrimination against, and bigotry towards, people belonging to various groups.
While the Equal Protection Clause itself applies only to state and local governments, the Supreme Court held in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954) that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nonetheless requires equal protection under the laws of the federal government via reverse incorporation.
Text The Equal Protection Clause is located at the end of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment: amend. XIV, § 1.
Background
Though equality under the law is an American legal tradition arguably dating to the Declaration of Independence, formal equality for many groups remained elusive. Before passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, which included the Equal Protection Clause, American law did not extend constitutional rights to black Americans. Black people were considered inferior to white Americans, and subject to chattel slavery in the slave states until the Emancipation Proclamation and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Even black Americans that were not enslaved lacked many crucial legal protections. In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the Supreme Court rejected abolitionism and determined black men, whether free or in bondage, had no legal rights under the U.S. Constitution at the time. Currently, a plurality of historians believe that this judicial decision set the United States on the path to the Civil War, which led to the ratifications of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Before and during the Civil War, the Southern states prohibited speech of pro-Union citizens, anti-slavery advocates, and northerners in general, since the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states during such times. During the Civil War, many of the Southern states stripped the state citizenship of many whites and banished them from their state, effectively seizing their property. Shortly after the Union victory in the American Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in 1865, abolishing slavery. Subsequently, many ex-Confederate states then adopted Black Codes following the war, with these laws severely restricting the rights of blacks to hold property, including real property (such as real estate), and many forms of personal property, and to form legally enforceable contracts. Such codes also established harsher criminal consequences for blacks than for whites.For details on the rationale for, and ratification of, the Fourteenth Amendment, see generally , as well as
Because of the inequality imposed by Black Codes, a Republican-controlled Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Act provided that all persons born in the United States were citizens (contrary to the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford), and required that "citizens of every race and color ... [have] full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens."See Brest et al. (2000), pp. 242–46.
President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 amid concerns (among other things) that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to enact such a bill. Such doubts were one factor that led Congress to begin to draft and debate what would become the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America, p. 79 (MacMillan 2007).Newman, Roger. The Constitution and its Amendments, Vol. 4, p. 8 (Macmillan 1999). Additionally, Congress wanted to protect white Unionists who were under personal and legal attack in the former Confederacy.Hardy, David. "Original Popular Understanding of the 14th Amendment As Reflected in the Print Media of 1866-68", Whittier Law Review, Vol. 30, p. 695 (2008-2009). The effort was led by the Radical Republicans of both houses of Congress, including John Bingham, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens. It was the most influential of these men, John Bingham, who was the principal author and drafter of the Equal Protection Clause.
The Southern states were opposed to the Civil Rights Act, but in 1865 Congress, exercising its power under Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of the Constitution, to "be the Judge of the ... Qualifications of its own Members", had excluded Southerners from Congress, declaring that their states, having rebelled against the Union, could therefore not elect members to Congress. It was this fact—the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted by a "rump" Congress—that permitted the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by Congress and subsequently proposed to the states. The ratification of the amendment by the former Confederate states was imposed as a condition of their acceptance back into the Union.See Foner (1988), passim. See also
Ratification With the return to originalist interpretations of the Constitution, many wonder what was intended by the framers of the reconstruction amendments at the time of their ratification. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery but to what extent it protected other rights was unclear. After the Thirteenth Amendment the South began to institute Black Codes which were restrictive laws seeking to keep black Americans in a position of inferiority. The Fourteenth amendment was ratified by nervous Republicans in response to the rise of Black Codes. This ratification was irregular in many ways. First, there were multiple states that rejected the Fourteenth Amendment, but when their new governments were created due to reconstruction, these new governments accepted the amendment. There were also two states, Ohio and New Jersey, that accepted the amendment and then later passed resolutions rescinding that acceptance. The nullification of the two states' acceptance was considered illegitimate and both Ohio and New Jersey were included in those counted as ratifying the amendment.
Many historians have argued that Fourteenth Amendment was not originally intended to grant sweeping political and social rights to the citizens but instead to solidify the constitutionality of the 1866 Civil rights Act. While it is widely agreed that this was a key reason for the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, many historians adopt a much wider view. It is a popular interpretation that the Fourteenth Amendment was always meant to ensure equal rights for all those in the United States. This argument was used by Charles Sumner when he used the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis for his arguments to expand the protections afforded to black Americans.Sumner, Charles, and Daniel Murray Pamphlet Collection. . Washington: S. & R. O. Polkinhorn, Printers, 1874. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/12005313/ .
Although the equal protection clause is one of the most cited ideas in legal theory, it received little attention during the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead the key tenet of the Fourteenth Amendment at the time of its ratification was the Privileges or Immunities Clause. This clause sought to protect the privileges and immunities of all citizens which now included black men. The scope of this clause was substantially narrowed following the Slaughterhouse Cases in which it was determined that a citizen's privileges and immunities were only ensured at the Federal level and that it was government overreach to impose this standard on the states. Even in this halting decision the Court still acknowledged the context in which the Amendment was passed, stating that knowing the evils and injustice the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to combat is key in our legal understanding of its implications and purpose. With the abridgment of the Privileges or Immunities clause, legal arguments aimed at protecting black American's rights became more complex and that is when the equal protection clause started to gain attention for the arguments it could enhance.
During the debate in Congress, more than one version of the clause was considered. Here is the first version: "The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure ... to all persons in the several states equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property."Kelly, Alfred. "Clio and the Court: An Illicit Love Affair", The Supreme Court Review at p. 148 (1965) reprinted in The Supreme Court in and of the Stream of Power (Kermit Hall ed., Psychology Press 2000). Bingham said about this version: "It confers upon Congress power to see to it that the protection given by the laws of the States shall be equal in respect to life and liberty and property to all persons." The main opponent of the first version was Congressman Robert S. Hale of New York, despite Bingham's public assurances that "under no possible interpretation can it ever be made to operate in the State of New York while she occupies her present proud position."Bickel, Alexander. "The Original Understanding and the Segregation Decision", Harvard Law Review, Vol. 69, pp. 35-37 (1955). Bingham was speaking on February 27, 1866. See transcript.
Hale ended up voting for the final version, however. When Senator Jacob Howard introduced that final version, he said:Curtis, Michael. "Resurrecting the Privileges or Immunities Clause and Revising the Slaughter-House Cases Without Exhuming Lochner: Individual Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment", Boston College Law Review, Vol. 38 (1997).
It prohibits the hanging of a black man for a crime for which the white man is not to be hanged. It protects the black man in his fundamental rights as a citizen with the same shield which it throws over the white man. Ought not the time to be now passed when one measure of justice is to be meted out to a member of one caste while another and a different measure is meted out to the member of another caste, both castes being alike citizens of the United States, both bound to obey the same laws, to sustain the burdens of the same Government, and both equally responsible to justice and to God for the deeds done in the body?