parent nodes: Adarand Constructors v Pena | alienage classification | Amendment XIV | arbitrariness review | City of Richmond v JA Croson Co | Constitution | content neutral restriction | gender classification | INS v St Cyr | judicial power | Korematsu v US | Railroad Commission of TX v Pullman | rational basis | sexual orientation | state sovereign immunity | substantive due process | US v Carolene Products
equal protection
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; Hess v Pawloski nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; actus reus, personal jurisdiction, Pennoyer v Neff,service of process; venue; class actions; specificity, legality, mental competency nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [Jackson v Indiana]
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Amendment XIV
History
The Fourteenth Amendment was in part a response to Southern "black codes" that attempted to replicate slavery. Congress, then controlled by "radical Republicans," passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which outlawed black codes. Congress claimed authority for the Act under [Amendment XIII]. Johnson vetoed the law, and Congress passed it over his veto, then drafted Amendment XIV in order to protect the Act against judicial challenge or later legislative repeal.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declares that all inhabitants are citizens, and outlines their rights (to make and enforce contracts, own property, to have the "full benefit of all laws for the protection of person and property," and to be subject to like punishments and penaties). These rights were intended as specific privileges of all citizens, not a means to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race.
Congress saw itself as the primary enforcer of individual rights under Amendment XIV, not the courts.
"Jim Crow" began in the late 1880s, about ten years after Reconstruction ended. It was actually opposed by the Southern white upper classes, and was probably brought about after the depressions of the late 1800s by politicians who were afraid of cooperation between blacks and poor whites.
Types of protection under the Equal Protection Clause
"The Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination." ([Loving v Virginia] (striking down statute that forbade miscegenation by either race).
Factors that may describe a "suspect class" are "immutability," "history of prejudice," "irrationality," and US v Carolene Products grounds. [City of Cleburne v Cleburne Living Center]. Note, however, that these factors rarely work in practice; many immutable characteristics, for example musical talent, are perfectly valid grounds for legislative classification.
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