Under the 14th Amendment, African Americans could now legally claim the same constitutional rights afforded to all American citizens. Ratified in 1868, Congress and the courts have applied the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to many aspects of public life over the past 150 years.The Fourteenth Amendment addresses many aspects of citizenship and the rights of citizens. The proposed legislation directly contradicts the 14th Amendment guarantee that all people born in the US and under its jurisdiction are citizens of the US. More in The Constitution. The Citizenship Clause broadly defines citizenship, superseding the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. This clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to encourage Southern states to grant Black people the right to vote without forcing them to do so. The Supreme Court concluded that African Americans were not included in "we the people" in the preamble of the US Constitution.