Do teenagers really care about Equal Protection Clause?
April 17, 2018
Many people could say that teenagers don’t care about the history of how the Equal Protection Clause that has given us the privileges that we have today. And we do, it allows us to have the privilege to sit and be friends with the girl who wears a hijab, or have the privilege to be friends with the Hispanic kid who can’t speak English and whose parents risk their lives crossing the border to give him the same opportunities as you and me. We have the privilege to live in a country where we are ALL protected under the jurisdiction to be equally protected under the law. Before the Equal Protection Clause, the Bill of Rights only limited protected for individuals of the Federal Government. The 14th amendment was created after the Civil War in 1866, also after the implement of Amendment 13, the abolishment of slavery. It may have took almost two centuries to get equal right after many federal cases, but slowly we get to the purpose of the creation of this nation, which is a nation where all men are created equally.
Constitutional rights were made because state legislature was worried that individuals had lack of protection and civil liberties, which is why the Bill of Rights was adopted and the first 10 amendments in the constitution protects “We the People” against the government. The first ten amendments give us basic liberties like freedom of religion, speech and assemble against all unlawful actions by the government. Which is why no child should be put into a school due to their race, a child should be able to go to any school they want and be around children of different races, which is why Mendez v. Westminster school district and Brown V. Board of Education is relevant to the Bill of Rights because under the 14th amendment a person is entitled to citizenship rights and equal protection from the law, especially Endrew F. V. Douglas County School district.