Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on 9 July 1868 as one of the three Reconstruction Amendments passed in the years following the American Civil War. Its first section grants citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and forbids any state from denying a person life, liberty or property without due process of law or denying anyone within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Passed as a direct response to the legal status of newly freed slaves, the amendment's ratification was bitterly contested, and the former Confederate states were required to ratify it before they could regain congressional representation. Its Due Process and Equal Protection clauses have since become the basis for many of the most consequential rulings in American constitutional law, including Brown v. Board of Education outlawing school segregation, Loving v. Virginia striking down bans on interracial marriage, and Obergefell v. Hodges establishing a nationwide right to same-sex marriage.