Explain the Fourteenth Amendment, including birthright citizenship, the equal protection clause, and the due process clause, and analyze how it applied the Bill of Rights to the states (LA Civics, Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens strand).

What this topic is asking

This standard asks you to explain the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the most important amendments after the Bill of Rights. You need to know its three big ideas: birthright citizenship, the equal protection clause, and the due process clause, and how the amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states. On the LEAP Civics test, expect a source about equal treatment or a landmark case, with a question about the amendment's role.

A post-Civil War amendment

The amendment marked a major shift: it brought the states under the same duty to respect rights that the Bill of Rights had placed on the national government.

The three big ideas

Applying the Bill of Rights to the states

One of the amendment's most important effects came through the due process clause. Originally, the Bill of Rights limited only the national government. Over many decades, the Supreme Court ruled that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies most of the Bill of Rights to the states as well. This is why a state or local government in Louisiana, not just Washington, must respect freedoms such as speech and the rights of the accused. The amendment effectively nationalized the core protections of the Bill of Rights.

The amendment in landmark cases

The equal protection clause is the constitutional basis for major civil rights rulings. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court used equal protection to strike down segregated public schools, ruling that separate is inherently unequal (see judicial review and landmark cases). The Fourteenth Amendment thus became the engine of the civil rights movement and the expansion of equal treatment under the law (see expanding civil rights and voting).

Try this

Q1. Name the three major parts of the Fourteenth Amendment. [3]

• Cue. Birthright citizenship, the equal protection clause, and the due process clause.

Q2. Explain how the Fourteenth Amendment changed which governments must respect the Bill of Rights. [2]

• Cue. Through the due process clause, the Supreme Court applied most of the Bill of Rights to the states, so state and local governments must respect those rights, not just the national government.