Trump v. Barbara · ¶123

So the principal dissent is wrong to complain that the Court “has repurposed the Fourteenth Amendment to protect . . . rights that the Reconstruction Congress never contemplated.” See post, at 91. Delegates to the Colored Conventions drew upon their own experiences to successfully argue for a new Constitution—one that protected fundamental human rights, including an individual’s “‘right to own his body and mind’” and “the right of personal security and protection against injuries to our bodies or good name.” Thus, even in cases where the protagonist was not a Black American, this Court’s Fourteenth Amendment cases have focused, at bottom, on the same universal liberty and equality interests that motivated the Fourteenth Amendment itself. The question is (and always has been): Does the affected individual or group enjoy equal dignity? And the correct answer is (and has always been) to…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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