This year’s Law Day celebrates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the most-cited amendment in our jurisprudence. It is almost 150 years old and still going strong. Enacted to guarantee rights and protections to newly-freed slaves, its equal protection and due process clauses have been integral to many consequential court decisions and legislation in modern times that have protected fundamental rights of all citizens and prohibited discrimination.
For example, the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) relied on the equal protection clause to strike down miscegenation laws; in United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996), the court cited the equal protection clause in ending the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only policy; and the Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) decision cited both the due process and equal protection clauses as the basis for requiring states to allow same-sex marriage. President Harry S. Truman’s 1948 order to desegregate the military was based on the 14th Amendment due process clause, and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §12101 (1990), relied on the equal protection clause in prohibiting discrimination based on disability.
