The Fourteenth Amendment | Constitution 101

0:00[Music] today we're going to talk about the 14th amendment let's begin with the text 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 that's the citizenship clause no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the united states that's the privileges or immunities clause nor shall any state deprive any person of life liberty or property without due process of law that's the due process clause nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws that's the equal protection laws well where did this language come from let's tell the story of the 14th

1:06amendment and it's such an important and interesting story it follows from the backlash against the 13th amendment uh to the constitution which banned slavery in the u.s and after the 13th amendment passed southern states tried to reintroduce slavery by other means by passing a series of laws called the black codes and these codes denied the newly freed african americans the right to soon be sued to make contracts to inherit property and basically to exercise the basic civil rights of citizenship to which they were entitled congress responds by passing the civil rights act of 1866 which says that all people in the united states are entitled to the same civil rights to make and enforce contracts to soon be sued all the rights that the

1:59black codes had denied the thing was that congress wasn't sure it had the constitutional authority to pass the civil rights act of 1866 and therefore reconstruction republicans led by john bingham thought that the 14th amendment was necessary to make clear that congress had the power to enforce the provisions of the amendment by appropriate legislation and also to guarantee the equal civil rights or privileges or immunities of citizenship so at the core the 14th amendment is designed to constitutionalize the rights of the civil rights act of 1866 then the first sentence of the amendment overturned the part of the dred scott case that said that black people couldn't be citizens and had no rights that white people were bound to respect but then the question is who's entitled to birthright citizenship and the first

2:49test case was called wang kim arc and it was decided in 1898. wong kim ark was born in san francisco to parents who were both chinese citizens who resided in the u.s at the time he was born and at the age of 21 he returned to china to visit his parents who'd previously lived in the us for 20 years and when he came back to the u.s wong kimar is denied entry on the grounds that he's not a citizen under the chinese exclusion act which was enforced at the time no chinese subject could become a citizen he objected he said he was born in the us and therefore was entitled to citizenship and the court agreed because wang was born in the united states and his parents were not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of china the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment automatically made him a u.s

3:42citizen justice horace gray wrote the opinion on behalf of the six to two majority and the court concluded that under the 14th amendment it didn't matter who your parents were it mattered where you were born and if you were born on american soil you were automatically a u.s citizen the exceptions were native americans and diplomats who were not subject to the jurisdiction of the united states the second big idea in the 14th amendment is the privileges or immunities clause and the first test case was called the slaughterhouse cases really interesting and important case and the basic question was whether a company called the crescent city company in louisiana had created a monopoly when a city of new orleans set up a grand slaughter house basically as a health response to the fact that there was all this disgusting oval that was being

4:35poured into the river at a time when all these slaughter houses were killing meat to be transported across the country in newly refrigerated railroad cars so the basic legal question is does it violate the 14th amendment to create a monopoly and also was it a monopoly to require anyone who was a butcher in new orleans to use this slaughterhouse the court could have just decided that question either way and not really disrupted the law but instead the majority went out of its way to narrow the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th amendment in a way that basically read it out of the constitution the majority said that the privileges or immunities of u.s citizenship are a very narrow category of rights that were already protected in the existing

5:23constitution before the 14th amendment like the right to have the right of habeas corpus for example now the dissenter said this is completely contrary to the original understanding of the 14th amendment whose authors stood up in congress said that the purpose of this law is to incorporate or apply all of the original protections of the bill of rights so that they bind the states as well as the federal government as well as to ensure that all citizens have the same privileges or immunities including the right to sue and be sued to inherit property all those rights that were in the civil rights act which was the whole point of the 14th amendment um in its original passage and the dissenters objected that the privileges or immunities of u.s citizens were far broader than the majority had said

6:10it would take almost a century for the supreme court to agree and slowly to incorporate or apply individual provisions of the bill of rights against the states but the court had to do it through the due process clause not the privileges or immunities clause because the supreme court in slaughterhouse had read the privileges or immunities clause out of existence this is one case that there's a lot of consensus by liberal and conservative scholars that it was wrongly decided it was inconsistent with original understanding but the supreme court has not proved ready to re-examine the third big thing that the 14th amendment does is guarantee the equal protection of the laws soon after the 13th 14th and 15th amendments were passed their promise was undermined by southern redemption and by a series of laws passed mostly in the south that restricted the rights of african

7:01americans this system of segregation was known as jim crow segregation and it forced african americans to attend different schools than white people to drink from different water fountains to use different restrooms travel in different railroad cars and stay in different hotels the states also used a mix of violence intimidation and laws including poll taxes and literacy tests to keep african americans from voting and then finally less than two decades after the 14th amendment passed the supreme court issued its infamous decision in plessy versus ferguson in 1896. well what happened in this case homer plessy was working with a group called the committee of citizens which opposed louisiana's 1890 separate car act that act segregated railroad cars within the state it separated african americans

7:51from white passengers and said that african americans had to ride on separate railroad cars there was an exception for nurses if you were an african-american nurse you were allowed to ride with the white folk but not if you uh were not a nurse or in a position of equality that by itself might have given away the real purpose of the law plessy was chosen as a test case so the group could challenge the constitutionality of this law plessy appeared to be white and was born free but he was a mixed race and therefore he was considered black under louisiana law and plessy and his allies hoped that his arrest would prove the arbitrary nature of the law but in a seven to one decision plessy lost justice henry billings brown wrote the majority opinion upholding separate but equal laws according to the supreme court jim crow laws were constitutional the court concluded that these laws didn't violate either the 13th amendment which abolished slavery or the 14th amendment

8:49which promised equality here's justice brown while the object of the 14th amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color or to enforce social as distinguished from political equality or a co-mingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either justice brown for the court argued that the law was a reasonable use of the state's police power to regulate the health safety and morals of its population and justice brown said the underlying mistake of homer plessy's argument was the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps african americans with a badge of inferiority if this be so he said it is not by reason of anything found in the act but

9:41solely because african americans choose to put that construction on it but justice brown's arguments did not go unanswered justice john marshall harlan was the sold center his dissent is one of the most important and powerful descents in supreme court history here are harlan's words in view of the constitution in the eye of the law there is in this country no superior dominant ruling class of citizens there is no caste here our constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens in respect of civil rights all citizens are equal before the law and then harlem went on to say that in my opinion the judgment this day rendered will in time prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by

10:40this tribunal in the dred scott case well his prediction came true and harlan said that everyone knew the real purpose of the louisiana law what can more certainly arouse race hate harlan said what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races then state enactments which in fact proceed on the grounds that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens that as all will admit is the real meaning of such legislation as was enforced in louisiana in other words everyone knew what the real purpose was it wasn't a neutral purpose to exclude white people from railroad cars occupied by african americans or a neutral purpose to accommodate the desires of both black and white people but instead a racist

11:35desire to exclude black people from coaches occupied by white people based on a premise of black inferiority everyone knows that harlan and eventually the u.s supreme court came to agree to see how the court eventually came to agree and gave meaning to the promise of the 14th amendment let's fast forward to 1954 and to arguably the most famous and important supreme court decision of the 20th century brown versus board of education decided in 1954 thurgood marshall who was the head of the naacp legal defense fund and the great hero who argued brown versus board of education read harlan's descent for inspiration before he argued the case and brown was the culmination of a long-term decade-long strategy by the naacp and its lawyers like thurgood marshall and other great heroes to

12:28challenge jim crow laws in brown they targeted the segregation of public schools but the genius of their strategy was that it was a gradual campaign to undermine segregation in other contexts first like public universities and law schools before turning to segregation in public elementary and high schools that was a much more controversial issue because it affected lots more people and marshall realized it was best to start with law school before working his way up to public schools for example in sweat v painter in 1950 four years before brown the court already questioned the separate but equal doctrine of plessy that was a case involving hermann swett who was refused admission to the university of texas law school on the basis of race and the court said that was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause because the supposedly

13:16separate but equal law school that texas had set up was patently unequal the brown case combined challenges from a bunch of locations kansas south carolina virginia delaware and also washington d.c these cases all involved african-american students who'd been denied admission to white public schools the challengers all argued that segregation violated the 14th amendment's equal protection clause and that separate could never be equal when it comes to public education and in brown the supreme court unanimously agreed it overturned plessy and concluded that school segregation violates the 14th amendment's promise of equality and was unconstitutional chief justice warren held we conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place

14:05separate educational facilities are inherently unequal the court concluded that even separate but equal facilities are in fact unequal because separating the races results in a brand of inferiority imposed on african-american students in the end brown attacked the core of the white south jim crow laws and reinvigorated the 14th amendment's promise of equality after brown the supreme court extended the reach of equal protection clause to cover discrimination in other settings and in 1963 on the washington mall dr martin luther king said that the declaration of independence was a promissory note a promise that all men yes black men as well as white men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness

14:57the following year congress passed the civil rights act of 1964 a sweeping civil rights law promoting equality along with brown the civil rights act helped to make the promise of the declaration and of the 14th amendment a reality [Music]