Amendment XIV
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;
nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2.
Representatives
shall be apportioned among the several states according to their
respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state,
excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election
for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the
United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial
officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is
denied to any of the
male inhabitants of such state,
being twenty-one years of age,
and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation
therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male
citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one
years of age in such state.
Section 3.
No person shall be a
Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice
President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United
States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a
member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a
member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer
of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall
have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid
or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of
two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4.
The
validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,
including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for
services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be
questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or
pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion
against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of
any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held
illegal and void.
Section 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
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