The14th Amendment was intended to correct the moral wrongs of slavery. But it has been misunderstood and reinterpreted in cases involving workdays, schools, train cars and birth control.

America started doing so at the end of the Civil War. The constitution was amended then to overturn the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which held that black people were not Americans. The 14th Amendment ensured that freed slaves and their children would henceforth be citizens.