In a recent episode of Slate’s Amicus podcast, host Dahlia Lithwick speaks with civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill about the conservative legal movement’s efforts to narrow the scope of the 14th Amendment. The conversation links Donald Trump’s rhetoric and his Supreme Court appointees’ approach to constitutional interpretation to a broader, long-running challenge to Reconstruction-era protections.
The Amicus podcast, hosted by Dahlia Lithwick and produced by Slate, recently released an episode examining how the conservative legal movement has targeted the 14th Amendment’s guarantees over a period of decades. According to Slate’s description of the episode, the discussion focuses on what Lithwick and her guest, civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, describe as a sustained project to weaken Reconstruction-era protections and to cast doubt on key parts of the amendment.
The episode centers on the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which established birthright citizenship and promised due process and equal protection of the laws. Lithwick and Ifill discuss how those guarantees have been central to American constitutional development and civil rights law, and how they are now being tested in cases and controversies reaching the Supreme Court.
In Slate’s account, the conversation connects Trump-era rhetoric and policies to this broader legal assault. The episode’s description notes that Trump’s approach to law and constitutional constraints has helped accelerate efforts on the right to narrow the reach of the 14th Amendment and related Reconstruction amendments, in part through the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court and the broader conservative legal movement.
Ifill, a longtime civil rights litigator and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, underscores the 14th Amendment’s critical role in securing equal justice. She discusses with Lithwick how, even in a period when the Supreme Court is widely viewed by liberals and many legal scholars as skeptical of expansive readings of civil rights protections, there remains room for lower federal courts and state courts to enforce constitutional guarantees and vindicate individual rights.
The podcast also highlights tensions between periods of progress and backlash in civil rights law. Lithwick and Ifill reflect on how moments of hope and apparent retrenchment often coexist, and how recent Supreme Court decisions have intensified debate over the meaning and future of the 14th Amendment’s protections.
Listeners are directed in the episode materials to Sherrilyn Ifill’s Substack newsletter, titled "Is It Too Late?", for further commentary on the courts and American democracy. The Amicus discussion arrives at a time when disputes over constitutional interpretation, presidential power, and the reach of the Reconstruction amendments are expected to continue surfacing in major cases before the federal courts.
