Fourteenth Amendment Ratified: Corporate Hijacking Begins

The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified after Louisiana and South Carolina provide the necessary three-fourths majority, extending citizenship and equal protection rights to formerly enslaved people. While designed to guarantee civil rights to Black Americans, the amendment’s broad language—particularly its Due Process and Equal Protection clauses—will be systematically hijacked by corporate lawyers to shield businesses from regulation.

The amendment declares “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.” Within five years, the Supreme Court’s Slaughterhouse Cases decision will gut the Privileges or Immunities Clause, opening the door for states to curtail individual rights while simultaneously expanding the amendment’s application to corporations.

By the late 19th century, corporate lawyers argue successfully that corporations are “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protections. Between 1868 and 1912, the Supreme Court hears 312 Fourteenth Amendment cases: only 28 involve African Americans, while 288 involve corporations seeking to invalidate state regulations. This constitutional capture transforms an amendment designed to protect freed slaves into a weapon protecting corporate power—a perversion of intent that constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum now recognize as “incorrectly gutting” the amendment’s original purpose.