How has the Supreme Court interpreted the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution says that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to mean that laws must treat all persons similarly situated in an equal manner. This means that states must not discriminate against certain groups of people, and must provide them with equal access to the rights and privileges afforded to other citizens. This has been interpreted to mean that states must not deny certain people the same rights, opportunities, and privileges as everyone else. One example of this was when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) that the racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. The Court declared that the equal protection clause prohibited the unequal treatment of students based on race, and that separate was not equal. The Supreme Court has also interpreted the equal protection clause as a way to protect the rights of minority groups. In Loving v. Virginia (1967), the court held that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, which prohibited interracial marriages, violated the Equal Protection Clause. Similarly, the court has held that states cannot deny gay couples the same rights as straight couples, as was seen in the Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) case. These decisions demonstrate how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as a means to prohibit states from using discriminatory laws that treat people differently due to their race, religion, sexual orientation, or other protected traits.

How has the Supreme Court interpreted the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

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