What did the 14 th Amendment provide Essays -

What did the 14 th Amendment provide? The 14 th Amendment provided that birth on U.S. soil established American citizenship. The Amendment guaranteed to all citizens the full privileges and immunities of citizenship and to equal protection of the laws at both state and federal levels. States were prohibited from depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property without first allowing them to defend those rights in a court of law. The 14 th Amendment also changed the federal voting law by counting all persons in each state into the electoral base. Any state that barred a male adult citizen from voting in state or federal elections would be penalized by a reduction in its number of representatives and presidential electors. Why do you think that Native Americans were excluded from this amendment? The 14 th Amendment was intended to give citizenship to the "former slaves", not to the Indians. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, The Department of Interior, and the State, Federal and the Supreme Court held that the 14 th Amendm ent did not confer citizenship on Indians and that under the Constitution, Indian tribes are classified as "domestic dependent nations" so therefore, Indians were tribal citizens and not American citizens. Native American civil rights Indian Civil Rights Act (1968)