Module 27: The Thirteenth Amendment

Slavery Before the Amendment: The Constitution of 1787 to Dred Scott

The Constitution that took effect in 1789 never used the word "slavery." It dealt with the institution in three places and used euphemisms each time. Article I counted "three fifths of all other Persons" for representation and direct taxes.¹ Article I, section 9 said that "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight."¹ And Article IV, section 2 provided that "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."¹

The Constitution Annotated, the Congressional Research Service's commentary on the text, notes that the delegates "vigorously debated the role that slavery would play in the newly created United States," that the debates "often pitted delegates from southern states that relied heavily on enslaved persons' labor against northern states whose inhabitants increasingly opposed the practice on moral grounds," and that Article V barred amendments before 1808 affecting the importation clause.² Congress outlawed the importation of enslaved people from abroad by the Act of March 2, 1807. The domestic trade continued.²

A different model: the Northwest Ordinance

One model for the amendment sat in the older record of the Confederation. Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid."³ The Constitution Annotated says the framers of the Thirteenth Amendment "drew upon directly" that wording.⁴ That sentence is the source of two features of the amendment: the phrase "involuntary servitude" and the exception for punishment of crime.

Compromises that failed

For seventy years Congress tried to manage the question by drawing lines. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state and limited slavery in the western territories. The Compromise of 1850 strengthened the fugitive slave law, ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and admitted California as a free state. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise and let each territory's population decide.²

The Supreme Court tried to end the argument in 1857. In Dred Scott v. Sandford Chief Justice Taney wrote that at the time of the founding Black people were regarded as "so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The Court also held the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.⁵ The decision was later superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause (Module 28). It narrowed the political room for compromise, and the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter.²

Emancipation by War Power, 1861 to 1864

Lincoln's first measures against slavery rested on the war power and on Congress. The Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862 freed some enslaved people who came within Union lines, but the Constitution Annotated calls the legislation "ineffective," and notes that Lincoln was initially reluctant to enforce it strictly for fear of losing the border states.² In 1862 Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, with compensation to owners (Act of April 16, 1862), and abolished it in the territories (12 Stat. 432, 1862).² That second act matters to Idaho, which became a territory the following year.

On September 22, 1862 Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The final proclamation, dated January 1, 1863, recited that "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." It listed the states and parts of states in rebellion. And it rested the act on what Lincoln called "an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity."⁶

What the proclamation left undone

The Proclamation had limits that its author knew. The National Archives explains that it "did not end slavery in the nation since it only applied to areas of the Confederacy currently in a state of rebellion (and not even to the loyal 'border states' that remained in the Union)." It continues that "Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery."⁷ The Constitution Annotated adds that the Proclamation did not reach enslaved people in the loyal states or in parts of the South already under Union control, and that some enslaved Texans did not learn they were free until June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger and Union troops reached Galveston.²

The legal question was also real. A proclamation issued under the commander in chief's war power might end with the war, might be challenged in court, and could be undone by a later President. A statute by Congress could be repealed by a later Congress. Senator Lyman Trumbull said in the Senate debate of 1864, as the Constitution Annotated summarizes, that an amendment was needed because of "uncertainty over Congress's power to prohibit slavery in the United States through legislation, and the need to prevent future majorities in Congress or state legislatures from reinstituting the practice." He wanted to take the question "entirely away from the politics of the country."⁴

The Text

The amendment is two sentences long. This is the National Archives transcription:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

U.S. Const. amend. XIII (passed by Congress January 31, 1865; ratified December 6, 1865), National Archives transcription

The Archives adds a note: "A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th Amendment."⁸ That is the fugitive slave clause quoted above.

How it was written

Three features set the amendment apart from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth that followed.

It names no actor. The First Amendment begins "Congress shall make no law." The Fourteenth says "No State shall." The Thirteenth says only that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... shall exist." In Clyatt v. United States (1905) Justice Brewer wrote that the Thirteenth Amendment "denounces a status or condition, irrespective of the manner or authority by which it is created," and that "The prohibitions of the 14th and 15th Amendments are largely upon the acts of the states; but the 13th Amendment names no party or authority."⁹ It therefore reaches private conduct as well as the conduct of governments, a point the Court had already made in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883: the amendment "is not a mere prohibition of State laws establishing or upholding slavery, but an absolute declaration that slavery or involuntary servitude shall not exist in any part of the United States."¹⁰

It is self-executing. Justice Bradley wrote in 1883 that the amendment "is undoubtedly self-executing without any ancillary legislation, so far as its terms are applicable to any existing state of circumstances. By its own unaided force and effect it abolished slavery, and established universal freedom."¹⁰

It has a second section. Section 2 gave Congress a power that later amendments repeated almost word for word. The enforcement section, covered below, produced much of the amendment's later history.

Other proposals

The text did not come from one draft. On January 13, 1864 Senator John Henderson introduced a joint resolution to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude. Senator Charles Sumner proposed a different formulation: "All persons are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as a slave; and the Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this declaration into effect everywhere in the United States." It failed. Representatives James Ashley and James Wilson had introduced similar resolutions in the House a month earlier, and the Senate Judiciary Committee reported a resolution that drew on these drafts.⁴ The committee's choice of the Northwest Ordinance language over Sumner's wording shaped everything that followed. Sumner's sentence stated a principle of equality. The Ordinance's sentence prohibited two named conditions and carved out an exception.

Passage: Senate, House, and the Election of 1864

The Senate passed the joint resolution on April 8, 1864, by a vote of 38 to 6. Two Democrats, Oregon Senators Benjamin F. Harding and James Nesmith, voted for it.¹¹ The House took it up in June and rejected it. On June 15, 1864 the vote was 93 for and 65 against, thirteen short of the two-thirds needed, and it split largely along party lines.¹¹⁴

The National Archives describes what happened next. Lincoln "took an active role to ensure passage through Congress. He insisted that passage of the 13th Amendment be added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming 1864 Presidential election."⁷ In his annual message of December 1864 he urged Congress to act quickly, and the Lincoln administration engaged in what the Constitution Annotated calls "a sustained effort to secure the necessary votes."⁴

The House passed the resolution on January 31, 1865, by a vote of 119 to 56.⁷ Wikipedia's account, which this lesson could not check against the Congressional Globe, says that 122 votes would have been needed, but that eight Democrats abstained, reducing the number needed to 117. It adds that every Republican, Independent Republican and Unconditional Unionist supported the measure, along with fourteen Democrats, "almost all of them lame ducks," and three Unionists, and that the House "exploded into celebration."¹¹

Lincoln's signature

Presidents have no formal role in proposing amendments, and a signature is not required. Lincoln signed anyway. The Archives records that "On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures."⁷ The Constitution Annotated says that his signature "was unnecessary for proposal or ratification of the Amendment."⁴ The Supreme Court had said the same about a different amendment in 1798 in Hollingsworth v. Virginia, discussed in Module 25.

Ratification, 1865

With thirty-six states in the Union, twenty-seven had to ratify. Illinois acted first, on February 1, 1865. By the end of February eighteen states had ratified, including Virginia and Louisiana, where the ratifying legislatures were those recognized by the Union and meeting at Alexandria and New Orleans. That raised a question the framers of Article V had never faced: how many of the seceded states had legally valid legislatures, and what number made three-fourths?¹¹ The Constitution Annotated gives a political answer. Andrew Johnson, who became President after Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865, "successfully pressured several southern states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment as a condition of rejoining the Union."¹²

The ratification dates

Wikipedia lists the first twenty-seven ratifications. Illinois, February 1, 1865. Rhode Island, February 2. Michigan, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, February 3. Missouri, February 6. Maine, Kansas and Massachusetts, February 7. Virginia, February 9. Ohio, February 10. Indiana, February 13. Nevada, February 16. Louisiana, February 17. Minnesota, February 23. Wisconsin, February 24. Vermont, March 9. Tennessee, April 7. Arkansas, April 14. Connecticut, May 4. New Hampshire, July 1. South Carolina, November 13. Alabama, December 2. North Carolina, December 4. Georgia, December 6, 1865.¹¹ Georgia's ratification supplied the twenty-seventh vote. Secretary of State William Seward proclaimed the ratification on December 18, 1865.¹²

Interpretive declarations

Some Southern legislatures ratified with strings attached. When South Carolina ratified in November 1865, it declared that "any attempt by Congress toward legislating upon the political status of former slaves, or their civil relations, would be contrary to the Constitution of the United States." Alabama and Louisiana made similar declarations that their ratification did not imply a federal power to legislate on the status of the freed.¹¹ Those declarations did not stop Congress from passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866 under Section 2, which in turn led to the Fourteenth Amendment. The Constitution Annotated says that concerns "that the Thirteenth Amendment did not sufficiently protect African Americans from various forms of discrimination led the Reconstruction-era Congress to enact civil rights legislation and propose the language that became the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments."¹²

Who was actually freed in December 1865

By ratification, state action had already ended slavery in most places. The Constitution Annotated, citing Eric Foner, says the amendment "freed some enslaved persons in Delaware and Kentucky."¹² Those were the exceptions, together with the parts of the South the Proclamation had not reached.

What the Prohibition Covers: Slavery and Involuntary Servitude

Section 1 prohibits two conditions, slavery and involuntary servitude. The cases below show how the Court has drawn the line around each.

All races, any place

The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) were mainly about Louisiana's slaughterhouse monopoly and the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Miller's opinion, delivered on April 14, 1873, also described the Thirteenth Amendment's reach: "Undoubtedly while negro slavery alone was in the mind of the Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any other kind of slavery, now or hereafter. If Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race within our territory, this amendment may safely be trusted to make it void."¹³ Justice Brewer repeated the point in Hodges v. United States in 1906: "Slavery or involuntary servitude of the Chinese, of the Italian, of the Anglo-Saxon, are as much within its compass as slavery or involuntary servitude of the African."¹⁴ The Constitution Annotated states that the Amendment "prohibits the enslavement of all races of people."¹⁵

What "involuntary servitude" means

The Constitution Annotated describes involuntary servitude as a condition that "generally involves compulsion of a person's labor through the use of physical force, legal action, or threats thereof."¹⁶ The leading modern case is United States v. Kozminski (1988). The operators of a dairy farm in Chelsea, Michigan were charged, after two men with mental disabilities were found working on it in poor health, in squalid conditions and in relative isolation, with conspiring under two federal criminal statutes to deprive the men of their Thirteenth Amendment right and with holding them in involuntary servitude, both under federal criminal statutes. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice O'Connor, held that for purposes of those statutes the term "necessarily means a condition of servitude in which the victim is forced to work for the defendant by the use or threat of physical restraint or physical injury or by the use or threat of coercion through law or the legal process." Four Justices (Brennan and Marshall in one opinion, Stevens and Blackmun in another) concurred in the judgment.¹⁷

Congress answered Kozminski in the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. The statute now defines involuntary servitude to include a condition "induced by means of" any scheme "intended to cause a person to believe that, if the person did not enter into or continue in such condition, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint," or "the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process."¹⁸ The federal forced labor statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1589, applies to anyone who "knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of a person" by force, threats of force, serious harm or threats of serious harm, "the abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process," or a scheme intended to make the person believe he or she would suffer serious harm or restraint if the labor stopped.¹⁹ The Constitution Annotated treats this legislation as an exercise of the Section 2 enforcement power.¹⁶

Historical exceptions

Some compelled service has never been treated as involuntary servitude. In Butler v. Perry (decided February 21, 1916) the Court upheld a Florida statute requiring able-bodied men to work on county roads for six days a year or pay $3, writing that the amendment "certainly was not intended to interdict enforcement of those duties which individuals owe to the State, such as services in the army, militia, on the jury, etc."²⁰²¹ In the Selective Draft Law Cases (1918) Chief Justice White's opinion, decided January 7, 1918, found it impossible to conceive how conscription in a declared war could "be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude."²²²¹ The Court has also upheld the common-law duty of a sailor to serve under his contract.²¹

The Punishment Clause and Prison Labor

The clause that follows "except" is the most argued part of the text. The amendment permits involuntary servitude "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The words are lifted from the Northwest Ordinance, as noted above.³²³ Wikipedia's article reports that "few records of the committee's deliberations during the drafting of the Thirteenth Amendment survive, and the debate that followed both in Congress and in the state legislatures featured almost no discussion of this provision."¹¹ This lesson did not confirm that statement against the Congressional Globe, and it treats it as the view of a secondary source.

Black Codes and convict leasing

Immediately after the war several Southern states passed laws known as Black Codes. Wikipedia describes them as criminalizing "vagrancy," largely enforced against the formerly enslaved, and records that convict leasing programs "allowed local plantations to rent inexpensive prisoner labor." It says that President Franklin D. Roosevelt forbade the leasing of convicts in 1941.¹¹ The Constitution Annotated records that after the war "state governments and private individuals continued to discriminate against African Americans and deny them equal rights under the law."¹² Wikipedia adds that "various commentators have accused states of abusing this provision to re-establish systems similar to slavery."¹¹

The Supreme Court's limits on the clause

The Court has not read the punishment clause as unlimited. In Bailey v. Alabama (decided January 3, 1911) Justice Hughes wrote for the Court that "The State may impose involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime, but it may not compel one man to labor for another in payment of a debt, by punishing him as a criminal if he does not perform the service or pay the debt."²³ The facts were small. On December 26, 1907 Lonzo Bailey signed a written contract with the Riverside Company to work as a farm hand at $12 a month, and took $15 in advance. Alabama made it a crime to take money under a labor contract with intent to defraud and presumed fraudulent intent from the failure to work or repay.²⁴ The Court held that the statute, through its presumption and its rule of evidence, enforced involuntary servitude in violation of the amendment. United States v. Reynolds (decided November 30, 1914) reached the same result for a scheme in which Ed Rivers, convicted of petit larceny and fined $15 plus $43.75 in costs, had a surety pay his fine, signed a contract to work for the surety at $6 a month to repay it, and was arrested when he stopped working.²⁵²³

How lower courts read the clause today

No Supreme Court decision holds that the Thirteenth Amendment limits what a state may pay, or not pay, a convicted prisoner for work done in prison. The courts of appeals have said so repeatedly. A recent example: on January 13, 2026 a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit decided Adams v. Wyoming Department of Corrections, an unpublished order and judgment. Jett Adams, serving life without parole, worked as a night janitor at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution from December 2023 to February 2024 at forty cents an hour, and sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming that pay below minimum wage was "slave labor." The Tenth Circuit dismissed his appeal as frivolous. The panel wrote: "The Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude expressly does not apply to prison labor." It quoted an earlier Eleventh Circuit decision, Omasta v. Wainwright, that "[w]here a person is duly tried, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned for crime in accordance with law, no issue of peonage or involuntary servitude arises." And it concluded that paying prisoners less than minimum wage, "or not paying them at all," for prison jobs "does not violate the Thirteenth Amendment."²⁶ Adams had argued that the amendment's exception covers labor only when the labor itself is the punishment, and that his sentence was imprisonment, not labor. The panel answered that "the labor he complains of is one component of his sentence of incarceration," and, answering his appeal to how the amendment was understood in 1865, that "we must be true to the text."²⁶

The Tenth Circuit order is not binding precedent, even in that circuit, except under narrow doctrines, and the court said it may be cited only for persuasive value.²⁶ It is useful here because it states the settled position of the federal courts in plain words and shows the argument that prisoners have made.

The argument against the clause

Critics read the history differently. The clause was copied, with little recorded discussion, from an eighteenth-century ordinance, and after the war Southern states used criminal law and convict leasing to put freedpeople to work. The Constitutional Accountability Center, a nonprofit law firm and think tank, wrote in 2022 that the exception is "a gaping loophole" that "allows incarcerated people around the country to be forced to work for little or no pay," and it supports a constitutional amendment to remove it.²⁷ The courts that apply the clause as written rest on the text. The Tenth Circuit's order says the "plain text establishes that the Thirteenth Amendment's restriction on involuntary servitude does not apply to prisoners."²⁶ Both sides can point to the same words. One reads them as a clear limit on the amendment, and the other reads the history as a reason to want the limit removed. The question of changing the text belongs to Congress and the states.

The numbers

An ACLU report, Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers, summarized by the ACLU on June 15, 2022, counted nearly 800,000 incarcerated workers in state and federal prisons, who "earn, on average, between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour nationwide," and found that "In seven states, incarcerated workers are not paid at all for the vast majority of work assignments." The ACLU says the government takes up to 80 percent of those wages for room and board, court costs, restitution and other fees.²⁸ Those are the findings of an advocacy group, and states describe their work programs differently. In Idaho, for example, the statute says the board of correction "may also provide for employment of those prisoners housed at a correctional facility" and that "Nothing in this section creates a right to any employment."²⁹

The Repeal Movement in the States

Since 2018 voters in several states have removed the penal exception from their own constitutions. The Nevada Independent reported in 2024 that "several measures" had been approved in Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont, and that similar measures had been rejected in Colorado and Louisiana.³⁰ Wikipedia's article on the penal exception collects the results. Colorado's Amendment A, 2018, passed with 66 percent. Nebraska, 2020, 68 percent. Utah, 2020, 81 percent. Alabama, which recompiled its constitution, 76 percent in 2022. Oregon, 2022, 55 percent. Tennessee, 2022, 79 percent. Nevada's Question 4 in 2024 passed with 60.6 percent.³¹ The Utah and Tennessee amendments added language that the prohibition does not stop an inmate from working, or in Utah's case does not apply to "the otherwise lawful administration of the criminal justice system."³¹

The record is not all one way. Louisiana voters rejected their measure in 2022.³¹³⁰ California's Proposition 6 in November 2024 failed by about 53 to 47 percent, with 7.8 million votes against and 6.8 million in favor, according to a California Globe report. The same report says an Assembly member planned to try again on the 2026 ballot with revised language.³² This lesson did not confirm the status of any 2026 measure in California or elsewhere.

In Congress, Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative William Lacy Clay introduced a resolution in late 2020 to close the exception, and Representative Nikema Williams and Senator Merkley introduced one in 2021 (H.J. Res. 53 and S.J. Res. 21).³¹¹¹ This lesson did not check the status of any resolution in the current Congress.

Proponents say the exception is a relic of nineteenth-century abuses. Opponents of repeal, as the secretary of state's ballot summary in Nevada put it, warned of "unintended consequences" for prison work requirements, community service and parole.³⁰ Both positions appear in the public record, and the question belongs to voters and legislatures.

Peonage and the Cases That Gave the Amendment Teeth

Most of the Court's decisions that actually struck something down under the Thirteenth Amendment concerned peonage, the compelled labor of a debtor. Justice Brewer's opinion in Clyatt v. United States (decided March 13, 1905) supplied the definition: "What is peonage? It may be defined as a status or condition of compulsory service, based upon the indebtedness of the peon to the master. The basal fact is indebtedness."⁹ The indictment, returned in the federal court for the northern district of Florida, charged Clyatt with returning Will Gordon and Mose Ridley "to a condition of peonage" to work off a debt claimed by the firm of Clyatt and Tift.⁹ The Court held that Congress had the power under Section 2 to prohibit peonage, and that the statute reached private actors. It also noted that peonage can begin by a debtor's voluntary contract: "Peonage is sometimes classified as voluntary or involuntary; but this implies simply a difference in the mode of origin, but none in the character of the servitude."⁹

Bailey v. Alabama (1911) and Reynolds (1914), described above, struck down state laws that used the criminal process to hold workers to their contracts. Taylor v. Georgia (decided January 12, 1942) invalidated a Georgia law that punished a person who had taken an advance on a labor contract and did not repay it, and Pollock v. Williams (decided April 10, 1944) struck down a Florida statute making failure to perform labor for which money had been obtained prima facie evidence of intent to defraud. Justice Jackson wrote in Pollock: "The undoubted aim of the Thirteenth Amendment as implemented by the Antipeonage Act was not merely to end slavery but to maintain a system of completely free and voluntary labor throughout the United States."³³³⁴¹⁶ Justice Reed dissented in Pollock.³³

Holmes's sentence about Idaho

Justice Holmes dissented in Bailey, and he opened with a sentence that places an Idaho reference in the Supreme Court's reports: "We all agree that this case is to be considered and decided in the same way as if it arose in Idaho or New York."²⁴ He meant that the Court would decide on the face of the statute and would not consider the fact that the Alabama law fell mainly on Black workers. The majority did not follow him. The Constitution Annotated describes the peonage cases as examples of states using the threat of force or legal action to compel payment of "a real or concocted debt or obligation."¹⁶ Federal law now punishes peonage in 18 U.S.C. § 1581, with a maximum of twenty years in prison, and separately punishes holding a person in involuntary servitude in 18 U.S.C. § 1584, with a maximum of twenty years.³⁵³⁶

Badges and Incidents of Slavery

The Civil Rights Cases, 1883

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 made it a crime to deny any person equal access to inns, public conveyances and theaters because of race. Congress relied on the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. In the Civil Rights Cases, decided October 15, 1883, the Court held the provisions unconstitutional under both amendments. Justice Bradley's opinion accepted that Congress may pass "all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery." The Court asked whether "the denial to any person of admission to the accommodations and privileges of an inn, a public conveyance, or a theater" subjected that person to "any form of servitude, or tend to fasten upon him any badge of slavery." If the denial does not, it said, "then power to pass the law is not found in the thirteenth amendment," and it held that private denial of such access is not a badge of slavery.¹⁰ The Constitution Annotated summarizes the Court's list of the badges and incidents of slavery: "(1) compulsory service for another's benefit; (2) restrictions on freedom of movement; (3) the inability to hold property or enter into contracts; and (4) the incapacity to have standing in court or testify against a White person."³⁷ Justice Harlan dissented alone.¹⁰

Plessy, 1896

The Court used the same narrow reading in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), upholding a Louisiana law that required separate railway cars. The majority said that the claim of conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment "is too clear for argument," because slavery implies "the ownership of mankind as a chattel, or, at least, the control of the labor and services of one man for the benefit of another." A statute that "implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races," it wrote, "has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of involuntary servitude." Justice Brewer did not take part and Justice Harlan dissented.³⁸ Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overruled Plessy, as the Constitution Annotated notes.³⁷

Hodges, 1906

In Hodges v. United States (decided May 28, 1906) a group of white men had threatened Black workers at a lumber mill to stop them from working. They were convicted under federal conspiracy laws. The Court held that the Thirteenth Amendment did not give Congress power to punish them, because interference with a person's freedom to contract did not subject him to slavery or involuntary servitude. Justice Brewer wrote the opinion; Justice Harlan, joined by Justice Day, dissented.¹⁴³⁹

Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 1968

For sixty-two years Hodges stood. Then in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., argued April 1 and 2 and decided June 17, 1968, the Court read the enforcement clause the other way. Joseph Lee Jones and his wife had alleged that the Alfred H. Mayer Company refused to sell them a home in the Paddock Woods community of St. Louis County, Missouri, "for the sole reason that petitioner Joseph Lee Jones is a Negro." They sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1982, which gives all citizens "the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property."⁴⁰⁴¹ The Eighth Circuit had held that the statute applies only to state action. The Supreme Court, 7 to 2 in an opinion by Justice Stewart, held that it reaches private discrimination and that Congress had power to enact it under the Thirteenth Amendment. Justice Stewart wrote: "Surely Congress has the power under the Thirteenth Amendment rationally to determine what are the badges and the incidents of slavery, and the authority to translate that determination into effective legislation." And he added: "At the very least, the freedom that Congress is empowered to secure under the Thirteenth Amendment includes the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. If Congress cannot say that being a free man means at least this much, then the Thirteenth Amendment made a promise the Nation cannot keep." Justice Harlan, joined by Justice White, dissented. Hodges was overruled on this point (footnote 78 of the opinion).⁴⁰⁴²

After Jones

The Court then applied the same reading of Section 2 in several settings. Griffin v. Breckenridge (decided June 7, 1971) allowed a damages action under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) by Black citizens of Mississippi who alleged that private defendants had conspired to assault them as they traveled on public highways. The Court cautioned that the statute was not a source of "general federal tort law" and that a claim requires "invidiously discriminatory animus behind the conspirators' action."⁴³⁴² Runyon v. McCrary (1976) applied the 1866 Act's contract provisions, now 42 U.S.C. § 1981, to bar racially discriminatory admissions policies at private schools; the Constitution Annotated notes that the decision was later superseded in part by 42 U.S.C. § 1981(c).⁴²

What is still unsettled

The scope of the "badges and incidents" power is open in several respects. In Palmer v. Thompson (1971) the Court held that a city's decision to close its swimming pools to everyone, even if meant to avoid desegregation, was not itself a badge of slavery prohibited by the amendment, though it noted that Congress had not enacted a law on the point.⁴² In City of Memphis v. Greene (1981) the Court held that closing one end of a street, even if it burdened Black residents more, was not a badge of slavery, and the Court has suggested that the Congress that proposed the amendment was not concerned with practices that merely have a disparate effect. As the Constitution Annotated puts it, "it is unclear whether Congress's Thirteenth Amendment enforcement power extends to prohibiting such practices."⁴²

Section 2 in Practice: The Statutes Congress Has Passed

The Thirteenth Amendment is the constitutional source of several federal laws that officials, employers and landlords meet in daily life.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866. Its provisions survive in 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1982. Section 1981 says that "All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens."⁴⁴ Section 1982 covers property.⁴¹

The peonage laws. 42 U.S.C. § 1994 abolishes peonage, and 18 U.S.C. § 1581 punishes anyone who "holds or returns any person to a condition of peonage, or arrests any person with the intent of placing him in or returning him to a condition of peonage."⁴⁵³⁵

The forced labor and trafficking laws. After Kozminski, Congress added 18 U.S.C. § 1589 and the definition of involuntary servitude in 22 U.S.C. § 7102(8). Section 1589 defines "abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process" as "the use or threatened use of a law or legal process, whether administrative, civil, or criminal, in any manner or for any purpose for which the law was not designed, in order to exert pressure on another person to cause that person to take some action or refrain from taking some action."¹⁹

Hate crimes. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, titled in the Justice Department opinion the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, punishes bodily injury caused because of race, color, religion or national origin without requiring a connection to commerce or state action. Whether that provision rests on the Thirteenth Amendment was a live question. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that Congress could rely on the enforcement clause "insofar as the violence is directed at members of those religions or national origins that would have been considered races at the time of the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment." The Supreme Court has not decided the question.⁴⁶

Beyond race

The Court has never held that Congress may use Section 2 to reach harms unconnected to race or to forced labor. The Constitution Annotated reports that "some scholars have argued that the Amendment prohibits parents from abusing their children or prevents the government from banning abortion," that the Supreme Court has "never applied the Prohibition Clause in Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment to child abuse or abortion bans," and that it has not addressed whether Congress could use Section 2 on those issues.⁴⁶ These are academic arguments only. A court has not accepted them, and this lesson does not suggest they are likely to be accepted. The practical point is that the extent of Congress's power to define the "badges and incidents" of slavery is the largest open question in the amendment's law.

Myths and Misreadings

Quick questions

What does the amendment prohibit? Slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime after conviction, anywhere in the United States or its jurisdiction.

Does it apply to private employers? Yes. Clyatt, the peonage cases and Jones v. Mayer all involved private parties or state laws that backed private compulsion.

Can Congress go beyond what the courts have found? Within limits. Under Jones, Congress may "rationally determine" the badges and incidents of slavery. The outer edge is untested.

Landmark Cases

Each case was read in the opinion text on Cornell LII; lineups are those printed on the opinion pages.

This lesson did not independently confirm the vote counts of the Slaughter-House Cases or the Selective Draft Law Cases beyond the author and dissent named on the opinion pages. It could not confirm the page numbers in the U.S. Reports for the quotations drawn from the Constitution Annotated.

The Idaho Connection

A territory born free

Idaho never had a legal slavery question of its own. Congress organized the Territory of Idaho on March 3, 1863, by an act signed by President Lincoln.⁴⁸ The year before, Congress had abolished slavery in all the territories (12 Stat. 432), which the Constitution Annotated notes.² Idaho entered the Union on July 3, 1890, long after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.⁴⁸ It was not among the states that voted on the amendment in 1865.

The Idaho Constitution

This lesson read sections 1 through 22 of article I of the Idaho Constitution on the Legislature's website and found no clause on slavery or involuntary servitude. It did not search the rest of the Idaho Constitution. If you rely on the point, read the text yourself.⁴⁹ The practical effect is that no Idaho constitutional text restates the penal exception. Idaho voters have not been asked to remove one, and the repeal debates in other states do not translate to a ballot question here. The Thirteenth Amendment itself applies in Idaho without any state clause.

Idaho Code: forced labor and human trafficking

Idaho's human trafficking chapter, title 18, chapter 86, adopts concepts from the federal statutes. It defines "forced labor or services" as labor or services "performed or provided by another person and obtained through an actor's use of force, fraud, or coercion," and defines "coercion" to include "abusing or threatening abuse of the law or legal process against a person or a third party," destroying or withholding a person's identity documents, and threatening physical or financial harm or unwanted physical restraint.⁵⁰ Section 18-8609 makes it a felony to knowingly traffic another person with intent that the person engage in forced labor or services, or to receive any benefit from a venture that involves forced labor.⁵¹ Section 18-8603(3) sets the penalty for human labor trafficking at imprisonment of no less than three years and no more than twenty-five years, a fine of no less than $10,000 and no more than $80,000, or both.⁵² And section 18-8604 requires the court to order restitution of the greater of "the gross income or value to the defendant of the victim's labor or services" or the value of the labor under the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.⁵³

Idaho prisons and inmate work

The statute governing the state board of correction provides that the board "may also provide for employment of those prisoners housed at a correctional facility. Nothing in this section creates a right to any employment."²⁹ This lesson did not research Idaho Department of Correction work-program rules, inmate pay scales or Idaho court decisions on inmate wages, and it did not find an Idaho appellate decision on the Thirteenth Amendment and prison labor. A reporter or official asking how Idaho pays inmates should obtain the department's current rules and pay schedule.

The Idaho reference in Bailey

As noted above, Justice Holmes's dissent in Bailey v. Alabama opened by saying the case should be "decided in the same way as if it arose in Idaho or New York."²⁴ It was a way to say that the Thirteenth Amendment's rules apply the same way in every state.

Where This Shows Up for Officials, Reporters and Citizens

Corrections officials and county jail administrators

The punishment clause applies to a person "duly convicted." The Tenth Circuit's order of January 2026 restates the rule on conviction: where a person is "duly tried, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned," no issue of involuntary servitude arises from prison work.²⁶ But the clause does not cover a person who has not been convicted. The Constitutional Accountability Center's 2022 blog post describes a Pennsylvania suit by people held in civil contempt over child support who, to qualify for work release, had to work in a county recycling center. The post argues that the clause "does not bar the suit because labor in the Recycling Center is imposed on civil contemnors," and that the arrangement resembles peonage.²⁷ This lesson did not confirm the outcome of that case. An official who assigns labor to pretrial detainees, civil detainees or people held for unpaid fines should read the clause and these cases first, because the exception on its face covers only a person "duly convicted."

Employers, labor contractors and anyone who advances money to workers

The federal statutes reach ordinary workplace arrangements that turn coercive. Section 1589 covers obtaining labor "by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process," including using a legal process "for any purpose for which the law was not designed."¹⁹ Idaho's chapter 86 adds state criminal liability for labor trafficking and requires restitution of at least the value of the victim's labor under the federal minimum wage and overtime rules.⁵¹⁵³ The cases from Bailey to Pollock teach one lesson for employers: using the criminal process to make a worker repay an advance with labor is what the Court held unlawful.

Landlords, realtors and lenders

Section 1982 bars racial discrimination in the sale and rental of property, public or private, and has since 1866.⁴¹ Jones v. Mayer confirmed that the statute reaches private sellers. The statute's text covers any citizen's equal right to "inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property."⁴¹ This lesson did not cover the Fair Housing Act, which is a separate law.

Reporters

Prison-labor stories use the word "slavery" loosely. The accurate frame is that the amendment's text excepts punishment after conviction, that the Court has not held that prison wages violate it, and that the question of whether the exception should exist belongs to legislatures and voters. A story that quotes the ACLU's 13-to-52-cents figure should identify the source as an advocacy report and ask the state corrections agency for its own pay schedule.²⁸²⁶ A story about the state-level repeal votes can give the percentages above and note which amendments added a sentence preserving inmate work.³¹

Citizens

If you are asked to vote on a state constitutional amendment about the penal exception, read the actual text and the secretary of state's explanation. Utah's and Tennessee's amendments include language preserving inmate work, and Nevada's summary warned of "unintended consequences" for prison work requirements and parole.³¹³⁰ The Thirteenth Amendment sets a floor that no state may go below. A state constitution may go further.

Related Modules

Related lessons: Module 2, Article I: Congress (the three-fifths and importation clauses); Module 6, Amending the Constitution (the Article V process and the President's signature); Module 10, The Civil War Amendments; Module 14, Article IV: The States and the Union (the fugitive slave clause); Module 22, The Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment); Module 25, The Eleventh Amendment (Hollingsworth and the President's signature); Module 28, The Fourteenth Amendment (citizenship, equal protection and Section 5); Module 29, The Fifteenth Amendment.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• National Archives, The Constitution: A Transcription
• National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27
• National Archives, 13th Amendment: Abolition of Slavery (1865)
• National Archives, Transcript of the Emancipation Proclamation
• The Northwest Ordinance (Avalon Project)
• Constitution Annotated, Amendment XIII (Cornell LII)
• 18 U.S.C. § 1581 (peonage)
• 18 U.S.C. § 1584 (involuntary servitude)
• 18 U.S.C. § 1589 (forced labor)
• 22 U.S.C. § 7102 (definitions)
• 42 U.S.C. § 1981
• 42 U.S.C. § 1982
• 42 U.S.C. § 1994 (peonage abolished)

Supreme Court and Circuit Opinions

• Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)
• Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873)
• Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883)
• Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
• Clyatt v. United States, 197 U.S. 207 (1905)
• Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1 (1906)
• Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219 (1911)
• United States v. Reynolds, 235 U.S. 133 (1914)
• Butler v. Perry, 240 U.S. 328 (1916)
• Arver v. United States (Selective Draft Law Cases), 245 U.S. 366 (1918)
• Taylor v. Georgia, 315 U.S. 25 (1942)
• Pollock v. Williams, 322 U.S. 4 (1944)
• Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968)
• Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88 (1971)
• United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931 (1988)
• Adams v. Wyoming Department of Corrections, No. 25-8018 (10th Cir. Jan. 13, 2026)

Idaho Law

• Idaho Const. art. I (Declaration of Rights)
• Idaho Code § 18-8602 (definitions)
• Idaho Code § 18-8603 (penalties)
• Idaho Code § 18-8604 (restitution)
• Idaho Code § 18-8609 (human labor trafficking)
• Idaho Code § 20-209 (state board of correction)

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• Wikipedia, Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
• Wikipedia, Penal exception clause
• Wikipedia, Idaho Territory
• The Nevada Independent, Question 4 on the 2024 Nevada Ballot
• California Globe, Anti-Slavery Constitutional Ballot Amendment for 2026
• ACLU, Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers (summary)
• Constitutional Accountability Center, Fight to Abolish Slavery Continues
• National Constitution Center, Interactive Constitution: Amendment XIII

Related Training Modules

• Module 2: Article I: Congress
• Module 6: Amending the Constitution
• Module 10: The Civil War Amendments
• Module 14: Article IV: The States and the Union
• Module 22: The Eighth Amendment
• Module 25: The Eleventh Amendment
• Module 28: The Fourteenth Amendment
• Module 29: The Fifteenth Amendment
• Course index: The United States Constitution

Footnotes

1. U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 3; art. I, § 9, cl. 1; art. IV, § 2, cl. 3, National Archives, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript.
2. Constitution Annotated, Slavery and Civil War (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/slavery-and-civil-war. Source for the Framers' debates, the 1807 importation act, the compromises of 1820, 1850 and 1854, Dred Scott, the Confiscation Acts, the 1862 acts abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories (12 Stat. 432), the Emancipation Proclamation and its limits, and June 19, 1865 in Galveston.
3. The Northwest Ordinance (July 13, 1787), Article 6, Avalon Project, Yale Law School, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/nworder.asp.
4. Constitution Annotated, Drafting of Thirteenth Amendment (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/drafting-of-thirteenth-amendment. Source for the Henderson, Sumner, Ashley and Wilson drafts, Senator Trumbull's argument, the Senate vote date (April 8, 1864), the House dates (June 1864 and January 31, 1865), Lincoln's December 1864 message, and the statement that Lincoln's signature was unnecessary.
5. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/60/393. Source for Chief Justice Taney's statement about the founding-era view and for the holding on the Missouri Compromise. The case was superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment.
6. National Archives, Transcript of the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863), https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html.
7. National Archives, 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865), https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment. Source for the 119 to 56 House vote, Lincoln's February 1, 1865 approval of the joint resolution, the limits of the Emancipation Proclamation and the party platform of 1864.
8. National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27. Gives the text of Amendment XIII, the dates "Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865," and the note that a portion of Article IV, section 2 "was superseded by the 13th Amendment."
9. Clyatt v. United States, 197 U.S. 207 (argued December 13 and 14, 1904, decided March 13, 1905) (Brewer, J.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/197/207.
10. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (decided October 15, 1883) (Bradley, J.; Harlan, J., dissenting), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/109/3.
11. "Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution (secondary source, opened October 2026). Source for the Senate vote of 38 to 6 (April 8, 1864), the House vote of 93 to 65 (June 15, 1864), details of the January 31, 1865 House vote, the ratification list of 27 states and the Southern interpretive declarations, and the descriptions of the Black Codes and convict leasing. This lesson did not check these against the Congressional Globe.
12. Constitution Annotated, Ratification of Thirteenth Amendment (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/ratification-of-thirteenth-amendment. Source for Johnson's pressure on Southern states, Seward's proclamation of December 18, 1865, ratification on December 6, 1865, the freeing of enslaved persons in Delaware and Kentucky, and the continuing discrimination that led to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
13. Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (decided April 14, 1873) (Miller, J.; Field, J., dissenting), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/83/36. The vote count was not separately confirmed by this lesson.
14. Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1 (argued April 23, decided May 28, 1906) (Brewer, J.; Harlan, J., dissenting, joined by Day, J.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/203/1.
15. Constitution Annotated, Prohibition Clause (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/prohibition-clause.
16. Constitution Annotated, Scope of the Prohibition (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/scope-of-the-prohibition. Source for the description of involuntary servitude, the peonage cases, Kozminski and Congress's response in the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.
17. United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931 (argued February 23, decided June 29, 1988) (O'Connor, J., for the Court, joined by Rehnquist, C.J., and White, Scalia and Kennedy, JJ.; Brennan, J., joined by Marshall, J., and Stevens, J., joined by Blackmun, J., each concurring in the judgment), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/487/931. Source for the farm in Chelsea, Michigan and the holding quoted from the syllabus.
18. 22 U.S.C. § 7102(8) (definition of "involuntary servitude"), Cornell LII, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/7102.
19. 18 U.S.C. § 1589 (forced labor), Cornell LII, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1589.
20. Butler v. Perry, 240 U.S. 328 (submitted January 14, decided February 21, 1916), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/240/328. Source for the Florida road-duty statute (six days a year or $3). The quotation about "duties which individuals owe to the State" is reproduced in the Constitution Annotated page on historical exceptions.
21. Constitution Annotated, Historical Exceptions (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/historical-exceptions. Source for Butler v. Perry, the Selective Draft Law Cases and Robertson v. Baldwin.
22. Arver v. United States (Selective Draft Law Cases), 245 U.S. 366 (argued December 13 and 14, 1917, decided January 7, 1918) (White, C.J.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/245/366.
23. Constitution Annotated, Exceptions Clause (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/exceptions-clause. Source for the origin of the clause in the Northwest Ordinance and for the quotation from Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219, 244 (1911).
24. Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219 (argued October 20 and 21, 1910, decided January 3, 1911) (Hughes, J.; Holmes, J., dissenting), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/219/219. Source for the contract of December 26, 1907, the $15 advance, the $12 monthly wage, and the quotations from both the opinion and Justice Holmes's dissent.
25. United States v. Reynolds, 235 U.S. 133 (decided November 30, 1914) (Day, J.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/235/133. Source for the facts about Ed Rivers, the $15 fine, the $43.75 costs and the contract at $6 a month.
26. Adams v. Wyoming Department of Corrections Medium Correctional Institution Warden, No. 25-8018 (10th Cir. January 13, 2026) (unpublished order and judgment; Hartz, Eid and Carson, JJ.), https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/010111367415.pdf. The order states it is not binding precedent but may be cited for persuasive value. Source for the facts (forty cents an hour, life without parole), the quotations and the court's reading of the clause.
27. Miriam Becker-Cohen, "Fight to Abolish Slavery Continues in Congress and Federal Court," Constitutional Accountability Center (July 21, 2022), https://theusconstitution.org/blog/blog-fight-to-abolish-slavery-continues-in-congress-and-federal-court. Advocacy commentary; this lesson used it for the group's argument and did not confirm the outcome of the Lackawanna County case.
28. ACLU, summary of Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers (June 15, 2022), https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploitation-of-incarcerated-workers. Advocacy-group findings, not a government statistic.
29. Idaho Code § 20-209(1) (control and management of correctional facilities and prisoners), https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title20/T20CH2/SECT20-209.
30. Isabella Aldrete, "Indy Explains: Banning slavery? Question 4 on the 2024 Nevada Ballot," The Nevada Independent, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/indy-explains-banning-slavery-question-4-on-the-2024-nevada-ballot. Source for the list of states and the secretary of state's warning of "unintended consequences."
31. "Penal exception clause," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause (secondary source, opened October 2026). Source for the state ballot percentages (Colorado 66, Nebraska 68, Utah 81, Alabama 76, Oregon 55, Tennessee 79, Nevada 60.6), the language of the Utah and Tennessee amendments and the 2020 and 2021 congressional resolutions.
32. Evan Symon, "Anti-Slavery Constitutional Ballot Amendment for 2026 Bans Involuntary Servitude as Punishment," California Globe (February 21, 2025), https://californiaglobe.com/fr/anti-slavery-constitutional-ballot-amendment-for-2026-bans-involuntary-servitude-as-punishment/. Source for the Proposition 6 vote totals and the plan for ACA 6. This lesson did not confirm what happened to ACA 6.
33. Pollock v. Williams, 322 U.S. 4 (argued February 10, decided April 10, 1944) (Jackson, J.; Reed, J., dissenting), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/322/4.
34. Taylor v. Georgia, 315 U.S. 25 (argued December 15 and 16, 1941, decided January 12, 1942) (Byrnes, J.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/315/25.
35. 18 U.S.C. § 1581 (peonage; obstructing enforcement), Cornell LII, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1581.
36. 18 U.S.C. § 1584 (sale into involuntary servitude), Cornell LII, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1584.
37. Constitution Annotated, Defining Badges and Incidents of Slavery (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/defining-badges-and-incidents-of-slavery. Source for the Court's four-part list in the Civil Rights Cases, the treatment of Plessy and the later cases.
38. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) (Brown, J.; Brewer, J., not participating; Harlan, J., dissenting), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/163/537.
39. Constitution Annotated, Early Doctrine on Enforcement Clause of Thirteenth Amendment (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/early-doctrine-on-enforcement-clause-of-thirteenth-amendment. Source for the facts and reasoning of Hodges v. United States and the narrow reading of Section 2 before 1968.
40. Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (argued April 1 and 2, decided June 17, 1968) (Stewart, J.; Harlan, J., dissenting, joined by White, J.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/392/409. The 7-to-2 count follows from the lineup; the overruling of Hodges is footnote 78 of the opinion as cited in the Constitution Annotated.
41. 42 U.S.C. § 1982 (property rights of citizens), Cornell LII, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1982.
42. Constitution Annotated, Scope of Enforcement Clause of Thirteenth Amendment (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/scope-of-enforcement-clause-of-thirteenth-amendment. Source for Jones, Runyon, Griffin, Palmer v. Thompson (1971) and City of Memphis v. Greene (1981). This lesson did not open the opinions in Runyon, Palmer or Memphis and relies on the Constitution Annotated's description of them.
43. Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88 (argued January 13 and 14, decided June 7, 1971) (Stewart, J.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/403/88.
44. 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (equal rights under the law), Cornell LII, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1981.
45. 42 U.S.C. § 1994 (peonage abolished), Cornell LII, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1994.
46. Constitution Annotated, Use of Enforcement Clause Power Beyond Harms of Racial Discrimination (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/use-of-enforcement-clause-power-beyond-harms-of-racial-discrimination. Source for the 2009 Hate Crimes Prevention Act discussion, the Office of Legal Counsel opinion (33 Op. O.L.C. 240) and the academic arguments mentioned.
47. Constitution Annotated, Overview of Enforcement Clause of Thirteenth Amendment (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-13/overview-of-enforcement-clause-of-thirteenth-amendment.
48. "Idaho Territory," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_Territory (secondary source, opened October 2026). Source for the organization of the territory on March 3, 1863, and statehood on July 3, 1890.
49. Idaho Const. art. I, §§ 1 through 22, Idaho Legislature, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtI/Sect1/ (and the following section pages). This lesson read those 22 sections and found no slavery clause.
50. Idaho Code § 18-8602 (definitions), https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title18/T18CH86/SECT18-8602.
51. Idaho Code § 18-8609 (human labor trafficking), https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title18/T18CH86/SECT18-8609.
52. Idaho Code § 18-8603 (penalties), https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title18/T18CH86/SECT18-8603.
53. Idaho Code § 18-8604 (restitution; rehabilitation), https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title18/T18CH86/SECT18-8604.