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Yes. The US Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses permits them to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, through the process of selective incorporation. This allows federal legislation and US Supreme Court decisions to be applied uniformly, nationwide, as individual clauses in the Bill of Rights are determined to be applicable in order to ensure protection against unconstitutional state statutes and policies. In the past, certain constitutional protections could only be enforced against the federal government, but the states were free to ignore individual rights and pass excessively restrictive or discriminatory statutes with impunity.
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified and adopted in 1868, in the aftermath of the US Civil War, to correct the false belief that the Constitution only protected a specific class of Americans (white citizens).
The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments overturned the US Supreme Court ruling in Scott v. Sanford, (1857), which held that slaves were not citizens and couldn't enjoy the same privileges and immunities as white people. The Privileges and Immunities, Due Process, and Equal Protection Clauses (all in Section 1) have all been used to protect various groups' civil rights.
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."
For more information about "selective incorporation," see Related Questions, below.
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How did the US Supreme Court reassert power after the Civil War?
The Supreme Court interpreted the meaning of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments in a manner incompatible with the apparent intent of Congress in order to maintain the status quo of social order in the South. By declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional (e.g., Civil Rights Cases, 109 US 3 (1883)), denying Congress the right to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment (despite the language of that Amendment), and refusing to apply anti-discrimination laws to the states or private citizens, the Court shaped and controlled policies that allowed discriminatory practices and state laws to flourish.
Which part of the Fourteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to make sure the amendment is not violated?
the enforcement clause
What power is held by the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court?
farts daddy
What was a result of the Supreme Court case Marbury v Madison?
The Supreme Court gained the power to declare laws unconstitutional
Who has the power to settle disputes in the US?
In the United States, the Supreme Court is vested with the power to settle disputes. The Supreme Court was established in Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
