Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 144

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

5 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

then forced Black convicted persons to labor in “plantations,
mines, and industries in the South.”  Id., at 50.  This system
of free forced labor provided tremendous benefits to South-
ern whites and was designed to intimidate, subjugate, and 
control  newly  emancipated  Black  people.    See  Slavery  by 
Another Name 5–6, 53.  The Thirteenth Amendment, with-
out more, failed to equalize society.

Congress thus went further and embarked on months of 
deliberation about additional Reconstruction laws.  Those 
efforts included the appointment of a Committee, the Joint
Committee on Reconstruction, “to inquire into the condition 
of the Confederate States.”  Report of the Joint Committee
on Reconstruction, S. Rep. No. 112, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 
(1866)  (hereinafter  Joint  Comm.  Rep.).  Among  other
things,  the  Committee’s  Report  to  Congress  documented
the “deep-seated prejudice” against emancipated Black peo-
ple in the Southern States and the lack of a “general dispo-
sition  to  place  the  colored  race,  constituting  at  least  two-
fifths of the population, upon terms even of civil equality.” 
Id., at 11.  In light of its findings, the Committee proposed
amending the Constitution to secure the equality of “rights, 
civil and political.”  Id., at 7. 

Congress acted on that recommendation and adopted the
Fourteenth  Amendment.    Proponents  of  the  Amendment 
declared that one of its key goals was to “protec[t] the black 
man in his fundamental rights as a citizen with the same
shield which it throws over the white man.”  Cong. Globe,
39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2766 (1866) (Cong. Globe) (statement
of Sen. Howard).  That is, the Amendment sought “to secure
to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many
generations  [was]  held  in  slavery,  all  the  civil  rights  that
the superior race enjoy.”  Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 
555–556 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting) (internal quotation
marks omitted). 

To promote this goal, Congress enshrined a broad guar-
antee  of  equality  in  the  Equal  Protection  Clause  of  the