page_title: Equal Protection Clause
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Equal Protection Clause / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Congressman John A. Bingham during the Civil War.
context_page_description: The Equal Protection Clause is from the text of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State [...] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
  A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the guaranteed right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War.
  The meaning of the Equal Protection Clause has been the subject of much debate, and inspired the well-known phrase "Equal Justice Under Law". This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that helped to dismantle racial segregation, and also the basis for many other decisions rejecting discrimination against, and bigotry towards people belonging to various groups.
context_section_description: Though equality under the law is an American legal tradition arguably dating to the Declaration of Independence, formal equality for many groups remained elusive. Before passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, which included the Equal Protection Clause, American law did not extend constitutional rights to Black Americans. Black people were considered inferior to white Americans, and subject to chattel slavery until the ratification of Thirteenth Amendment. Even Black Americans that were not enslaved lack many crucial legal protections. In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the Supreme Court rejected abolitionism and determined Black men, whether free or in bondage, had no legal rights under the U.S. Constitution at the time. Currently, a plurality of historians believe that this judicial decision set the United States on the path to the Civil War, which led to the ratifications of the Reconstruction Amendments.  
  Before and during the Civil War, the Southern states prohibited speech of pro-Union citizens, anti-slavery advocates, and northerners in general, since the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states during such times. During the Civil War, many of the Southern states stripped the state citizenship of many whites and banished them from their state, effectively seizing their property.
  Shortly after the Union victory in the American Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in 1865, abolishing slavery. Subsequently, many ex-Confederate states then adopted Black Codes following the war, with these laws severely restricting the rights of blacks to hold property, including real property (such as real estate), and many forms of personal property, and to form legally enforceable contracts. Such codes also established harsher criminal consequences for blacks than for whites.
  Because of the inequality imposed by Black Codes, a Republican controlled Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Act provided that all persons born in the United States were citizens (contrary to the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford), and required that "citizens of every race and color ... [have] full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens."
  President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 amid concerns (among other things) that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to enact such bill. Such doubts were one factor that led Congress to begin to draft and debate what would become the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Additionally, Congress wanted to protect white Unionists who were under personal and legal attack in the former Confederacy. The effort was led by the Radical Republicans of both houses of Congress, including John Bingham, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens. It was the most influential of these men, John Bingham, who was the principal author and drafter of the Equal Protection Clause.
  The Southern states were opposed to the Civil Rights Act, but in 1865 Congress, exercising its power under Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of the Constitution, to "be the Judge of the ... Qualifications of its own Members", had excluded Southerners from Congress, declaring that their states, having rebelled against the Union, could therefore not elect members to Congress. It was this fact—the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted by a "rump" Congress—that permitted the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by Congress and subsequently proposed to the states. The ratification of the amendment by the former Confederate states was imposed as a condition of their acceptance back into the Union.
caption: Congressman John Bingham of Ohio was the principal framer of the Equal Protection Clause.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "534", "Image ImageLength": "668", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2013:06:03 19:43:44", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5635", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "534", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "665"}