Republican John Bingham of Ohio, who introduced the 14th Amendment, said:
“I repel the suggestion…that the Amendment will…take away from any State any right that belongs to it.”
Yet after the Amendment was ratified, activist Federal Judges have done just that, whittling down the rights which were once the domain of the States themselves. Thomas Jefferson forewarned Charles Hammond of this probablilty in a letter in 1821:
“The germ of dissolution of our…government is in…the federal judiciary…working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow…until all shall be usurped from the States.”
The 14th Amendment soon became a door by which Federal Courts took responsibility for other rights, such as education, illegal immigration, and eventually even religion, away from States’ jurisdiction.