The Thirteenth Amendment
Slavery and involuntary servitude
Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, except as punishment for a crime.
Ratified 1865 · 3 minute read
Published by Quasi-Legal Institute · Report an error
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
In plain language
It reaches private conduct
Most of the Bill of Rights limits only the government. The Thirteenth Amendment is different: it prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude by anyone, including private individuals and businesses.
What came before it
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared enslaved people free only in areas that were in rebellion against the Union. It did not end slavery in the border states that stayed in the Union, such as Kentucky and Delaware, and its legal standing once the war ended was uncertain.
The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery everywhere. It was passed by Congress in January 1865 and ratified in December 1865, shortly after the Civil War ended. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments, followed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth.
How courts have applied it
The amendment has been used against practices that were not formal slavery. In Bailey v. Alabama (1911), the Court struck down a state law that treated a failure to work off a debt as a crime, which in effect forced people into labor. In United States v. Kozminski (1988), the Court held that involuntary servitude requires labor obtained through physical or legal coercion, not just psychological pressure.
In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Court rejected the argument that Congress could use the amendment to ban private discrimination in hotels and theaters. In Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. (1968), the Court took a broader view and held that Congress may decide what counts as a badge or incident of slavery, and upheld a federal law against racial discrimination in selling and renting property.