Because of the US Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment’s greatest impact is not the protection of citizens’ rights, though it is cited for that purpose. It is and has been the granting of human rights to corporations – an exercise not founded in the Constitution itself nor in the Amendment itself, nor in any other part of the Constitution. It was an extension of power to corporations that the Court, without any explicit foundation, allowed to be promulgated in a summary of its 1886 decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway by the Court’s reporter.
This clerk wrote in his summary of the proceedings that the Court’s opinion was that corporations are covered by the 14th Amendment.
The Amendment itself states that it applies to “native born and naturalized” persons. Corporations are neither born, native or otherwise, nor are they naturalized, nor are they persons!
We know that the Court did favor this fraud on the meaning and intention of the 14 Amendment, though the Justices did not wish to write so, explicitly. They used the Court reporter’s summary as a vehicle to convey this dictum, and succeeding Supreme Courts and congresses never challenged it. Of course not!
They were all conspirators in putting this boon to corporate power over on the American people who never would have approved the enormous empowerment of “robber barrons” that resulted from it.
Later decisions of the Supreme Court have only added to corporate power. For example, the 2010 decision in FEC v. Citizens United enabled corporations to sponsor with their dollars the election campaigns of congress and the President, practically without limit.
The Supreme Court’s betrayal of the Constitution is the reason that our country is no longer of, by, and for our people but rather of, by, and for corporations, the MIC, the imperial warmongers who rule the United States. ~ Alvin
All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state that they reside. No State shall make laws that abridge the privileges and rights. no state shall deprive a person of life, liberty, and property without due process. nor deprive any person within its jurisdiction. Those are Civil rights written in 1866. ~ Terry Hohl