Government and politics concepts · AP U.S. Government and Politics, AP U.S. History
Equal protection clause
Equal protection clause: The Fourteenth Amendment clause requiring states to give all people equal protection of the laws.
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What it means
The equal protection clause has been the basis for challenges to discrimination by race, sex and other categories. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court held that state-mandated school segregation violated the clause, overturning the 'separate but equal' doctrine.
Civil rights legislation and social movements have built on the clause to expand protections.
Example
A state law that assigns students to schools based on race would violate the equal protection clause under Brown v. Board of Education.
On the exam
Equal protection is central to Unit 3 civil rights questions; Brown v. Board of Education is a required case.
Lessons and practice questions
Related terms
- Due processThe constitutional guarantee, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, that government cannot deprive people of life, liberty or property without fair legal procedures.
- Civil rights movementThe mid-twentieth-century struggle, especially from the 1950s through the 1960s, to end segregation and secure equal rights for Black Americans.
- Jim Crow lawsState and local laws, mainly in the South from the late nineteenth century into the 1960s, that enforced racial segregation and disenfranchised Black Americans.