Unit VII Lesson 6

Equal Protection and the 14th

Amendment

Essential Question:

• What are the basic civil rights

and liberties of Americans?

• How have significant decisions

of the Supreme Court affected

our basic rights?

• What are the strengths and

weaknesses of court decisions

as instruments of social

change?

Selective

Incorporation

1868

The 14th Amendment- 1) Grants citizenship to

any person born in the U.S. regardless of race

Property

Dred Scott

Dred Scott

v Sanford

“Citizenship”

1857

“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”

The 14th Amendment- 2) Grants equal protection under the law to all

Americans (States and the National government can’t make laws that affect people differently because of their race, age, gender, etc.)

“Equal

Protection

Clause”

“Under

the Law”

1789

“Vagrancy”

Unconstitutional

Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954) - The Supreme Court

rules that segregation in public schools is a violation of the 14th

Amendment’s “Equal Protection Clause”

Linda Brown

“Separate educational facilities

are, by their very nature,

UNEQUAL”

Brown v Board of

Education

“Equal

Protection

Clause”

Plessy v

Ferguson

1896 1954

“Equal Protection

Clause”

Unconstitutional

1972

“Equal Protection

Under the Law”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcny_0cDv_E

In the Constitution the concept of equal

protection of the law is referred to in:

A.The Preamble

B.The 2nd, 4th, and 6th Amendments

C.Article III

D.The 14th Amendment

Following the Civil War the Fourteenth

Amendment to the United States

Constitution was designed to overturn:

A.Dred Scott v. Sanford

B.Plessy v. Ferguson

C.The Emancipation Proclamation

D.The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Homework!!!

Textbook Pages: 524-

539

Graphic Novel Pages:

120-126, 133-134