Congress wrote the amendment during Reconstruction to protect formerly enslaved people. It overturned the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which said Black Americans could not be citizens. It also barred states from denying any person life, liberty or property without due process, or denying equal protection of the laws.
Courts weakened it for decades. In Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation did not violate equal protection. The amendment's promise was revived in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which struck down school segregation, and in Loving v. Virginia in 1967, which struck down bans on interracial marriage.
The Fourteenth Amendment remains central to fights over civil rights. It is the source of birthright citizenship, confirmed for children of immigrants in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. Equal protection was also the basis for the 2023 Supreme Court decision ending race-conscious college admissions.