High School Students Equal Education Opportunity for Women: How Should It Be Defined? Handout: The Fourteenth Amendment (download this handout as a word document) The Fourteenth Amendment The Fourteenth Amendment, which was proposed and ratified after the Civil War, was intended, among other things, to establish the citizenship of former slaves and to ensure that the states did not deny equal rights to any person. The part of the Fourteenth Amendment that is referred to as the Equal Protection Clause reads: ". . . nor shall any state . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Supreme Court has often relied on the phrase "equal protection of the laws" as the basis for its civil rights rulings, including its decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Coed v. Single-Sex Education A growing body of scholarly literature points to the benefits of single-sex education. A prominent Harvard sociologist claims that "for many men, a single-sex college is optimal." The American Association of University Professors and the Center for Women Policy Studies argue that single-sex education has been shown to be primarily of benefit to young women in secondary school. The benefits to females from single-sex education comes from the elimination or reduction of discrimination favoring males in coeducational settings. "Sex, like race, is an immutable and highly visible characteristic that frequently bears no relation to ability to perform or contribute to society." (Quoting the Supreme Court opinion in Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973). >>Equal Education Opportunity for Women: How Should It Be Defined >>Handout: Terms >>Handout: A Case of Alleged Sex Discrimination >>Handout: Background >>Handout: The Fourteenth Amendment >>Handout: Legal Factors Related to Equal Protection Cases >>Handout: The Decision Law Day For Schools Home | Law Day Lessons Home