Reparations face a Fourteenth Amendment bar but can rest on Thirteenth Amendment power
Evidence
There is no doubt in my mind that the Supreme Court today would find reparations unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment and would consider such a program as governmental antiwhite discrimination. Existing Supreme Court precedent will continue to be a bar to upholding any legislation authorizing reparations as constitutional, but there is another path forward. I believe that Congress could implement reparations under its powers granted by the Thirteenth Amendment. On that basis Congress could enact reparations, designed to take black Americans “from under the yoke of bondage…to reap the fruit of [their] own labor,” in the twenty-first century, and it would be upheld as constitutional. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 576
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- DEFINE: Marks the pivot from diagnosis to remedy-design: the Fourteenth Amendment shields whites from race-based programs, so the whole case must be re-grounded in the Thirteenth Amendment’s badges-and-incidents power.
- XREF: Directly connects to the reparations-as-accounting framing established in earlier chapters; also echoes the legal-strategy tone of the Japanese American redress precedent.
Related
- Congress can enact reparations under Thirteenth Amendment powers, not the Fourteenth (similarity 0.94)
- Congress may constitutionally remediate slavery’s present-day vestiges under the Thirteenth Amendment. (similarity 0.83)
- De facto slavery persisted past emancipation, legitimating Thirteenth Amendment remedy today (similarity 0.79)