The Equal Protection Clause

The Fourteenth Amendment forbids any state from denying any person within its jurisdiction "the equal protection of the laws." It is the constitutional basis for most of modern American civil rights law.

The Equal Protection Clause was ratified in 1868 as part of the Fourteenth Amendment, one of three Reconstruction Amendments meant to secure the freedom and citizenship of the formerly enslaved. Its language is general: "No State shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Its early enforcement was thin. In Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the Supreme Court held that "separate but equal" facilities did not violate the clause, a reading that legitimized state-mandated segregation for the next half-century. The modern history of the clause begins with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which unanimously held that segregated public schools were inherently unequal and unconstitutional. Brown opened the door to a generation of decisions striking down legally enforced racial discrimination. Congress reinforced the clause with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Court has developed a tiered framework for equal protection claims. Race-based classifications by the government receive strict scrutiny and almost always fall. Sex-based classifications receive intermediate scrutiny. Other classifications receive rational-basis review, which is usually easy to satisfy. The clause has been used to invalidate racial segregation, sex-based discrimination in laws and benefits, restrictions on interracial and same-sex marriage, and many other distinctions. Modern debates over affirmative action, voting rules, and policing all run through the Equal Protection Clause. Its short text continues to do most of the work of American antidiscrimination law.