The “14th” Documentary Will Examine the Constitutional Amendment That Established Birthright Citizenship and Equal Protection After the Civil War
Ava DuVernay is returning to Netflix with a question at the center of America’s ongoing struggle over identity and belonging: Who gets counted as a citizen?
The award-winning filmmaker has completed “14th,” a new documentary exploring the history of the 14th Amendment and the continuing fights over birthright citizenship, equal protection and whose rights the United States recognizes.
Netflix announced Thursday that it plans to release the film later this year. The project arrives nearly a decade after DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated documentary “13th” examined the constitutional exception that allowed slavery as punishment for a crime and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black Americans.
“If ‘13th’ asked who gets caged, then ‘14th’ asks who gets counted,” DuVernay said in a statement.
‘14th’ Connects Reconstruction to the Present
The Ava DuVernay “14th” documentary will trace more than 150 years of debate surrounding the amendment through interviews with politicians, historians and cultural figures.
DuVernay said the film is not simply a history lesson. Instead, it examines how the amendment’s promises are being interpreted and challenged today.
“This is not a film about the past tense of freedom,” DuVernay said. “I’m not interested in asking you to look back. The film asks what kind of country is being written beneath our feet now … while we’re busy believing the stories we’ve all been told.”
Ratified in 1868 during Reconstruction, the 14th Amendment declared that people born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens. It also guaranteed equal protection under the law.
The amendment effectively overturned the Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that Black people descended from enslaved Americans could not become U.S. citizens.
The amendment therefore carries particular significance for Black Americans. It was adopted after the Civil War to establish rights that the country had denied Black people for generations and to prevent states from stripping formerly enslaved people of their citizenship.
Birthright Citizenship Returns to National Debate
The amendment recently returned to the center of national politics after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term seeking to restrict birthright citizenship for some children born in the United States.
On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s order in a 6-3 decision, ruling that it conflicted with the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
Trump has continued criticizing the decision and calling for changes to the country’s birthright citizenship protections.
Legal scholars and civil rights advocates have warned that efforts to narrow those protections revive arguments once used to claim that Black people and other marginalized communities did not fully belong in the United States.
Also Read: Ketanji Brown Jackson Criticizes Clarence Thomas of ‘Narrow Vision’ in Birthright Citizenship Ruling
DuVernay Continues a Constitutional Conversation
DuVernay’s 2016 documentary “13th” connected the criminalization of Black Americans and the growth of the prison system to the 13th Amendment’s exception permitting involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
“14th” continues that constitutional examination by asking how citizenship is granted, protected and challenged — and what happens when the government attempts to redefine who belongs.
The documentary marks DuVernay’s return to nonfiction filmmaking. Her broader body of work includes “Selma,” “Origin” and the Netflix limited series “When They See Us.”
With “14th,” DuVernay is once again turning the Constitution into a present-tense story about race, citizenship and power — and the promises Americans are still fighting to preserve.
