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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 lawe 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, couting 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 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 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 or 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 supressing
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, amd c;aims shall be held illegal
and void.
SECTION 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation,
the provisions of this article.
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Fourteenth
Amendment
