14th Amendment For Education In Massachusetts
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No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
In words unchanged since 1780, the education clause states in part that "it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish… the public schools and grammar schools in the towns." Mass. Const., pt. II, ch. V, § II.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution contains a number of important concepts, most famously state action, privileges or immunities, citizenship, due process, and equal protection—all of which are contained in Section One.
The amendment's first section includes the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause.
A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.
Teachers are protected from discrimination based on race, gender, and age. Discrimination based on disability or national origin is also prohibited. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects teachers at public schools.
Through its Equal Protection Clause, Due Process Clause, and by incorporating the Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment has addressed issues such as which students share a classroom and whether students can be expelled without a hearing or made to recite prayers.
Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment vests Congress with the authority to adopt “appropriate” legislation to enforce the other parts of the Amendment—most notably, the provisions of Section One.
In all Actions at law it shall be the libertie of the plantife and defendant by mutual consent to choose whether they will be tried by the Bench or by a Jurie, unless it be where the law upon just reason hath otherwise determined. The like libertie shall be granted to all persons in Criminall cases.”
It created a Senate designed to check the abuses of the more democratic lower house. And it created an independent judiciary. For the Founding generation, the Massachusetts Constitution embodied important constitutional principles like the separation of powers and checks and balances.
