What is the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

0:04[MUSIC] Now, the next clause is actually related to the Citizenship Clause. The next clause says, no state shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. This clause, there's a debate over what this clause was intended to accomplish. What it was intended to mean. The clause actually written out of the Constitution by an infamous set of Supreme Court cases in 1873 called the Slaughter-House Cases. This clause actually has not been relevant to constitutional litigation, to constitutional lawsuits since 1873. But its original meaning at a minimum, was to require that equality in privileges and immunities. What are the privileges and immunities of citizens? Well, they're the natural fundamental rights that all free governments must respect. That all free governments must secure. Some examples of the privileges and immunities of citizens, all those listed in the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights.

1:07The freedom of speech is this fundamental natural right that all free governments must secure and therefore, is a privilege of citizenship. The right to bear arms, the right to free exercise of religion, the right to due process provisions, for example. These are among the privileges and immunities of citizens. It abridges those rights if it gives one class of citizens more rights than another.

1:30For example, before the 14th Amendment was adopted, but after the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, was ratified. The Southern states enacted a series of so called Black Codes. In other words, what were the Southern states going to do with the newly freed population, the formerly enslaved population? Well, the Southern states try to reduce this population to a condition as near to slavery as possible without it being legal slavery through the so called Black Codes.

2:04In the Black Codes, the newly freed men and women in the South were denied the right to own property. White citizens could own property, but black persons could not. They couldn't own guns, Dirks, dagger, swords, firearms, munitions of any kind. White citizens were allowed, but not the newly freed men and women in the South.

2:24Hence, the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that preceded it. It basically said that the newly freed people are citizens of the United States and they're entitled to the same privileges and immunities. The Black Codes were in abridgment by giving more rights to white citizens than to the black citizens of the states. The Privileges or Immunities Clause is likely what was intended to guarantee this people equality in the privileges and immunities of citizens. [MUSIC]