Five words added after the Civil War became the engine of nearly every advance in American equality. They were written to protect the formerly enslaved, and they grew to protect far more.
The Equal Protection Clause says no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. It is part of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, one of three amendments passed to remake the country after slavery.
Its first purpose was clear: to guarantee the rights of the formerly enslaved against Southern states determined to re-subjugate them. For decades, though, courts read it narrowly, even tolerating separate but equal segregation under it.
The turning point was 1954. In Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that separate is inherently unequal, using the Equal Protection Clause to strike down school segregation and launch the legal civil rights revolution.
From there its reach widened. Courts have used equal protection to address discrimination based on race, sex, and more, making these five words one of the most powerful and contested phrases in the entire Constitution.
