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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