What the 14th Amendment Says About Paying Off Insurrectionists
Section 4 of the amendment bars the government from paying any debts “incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
14th Amendment Center Staff May 22, 2026
Image: Andy Feliciotti/Unsplash
The Public Debt Clause of the 14th Amendment, found in Section 4, speaks forcefully about how the post-Civil War United States was to deal with the fiscal challenges of rebuilding the nation the Confederacy nearly destroyed.
Its language is sweeping and unequivocal: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
In the only Supreme Court decision to ever grapple with the clause, the 1935 case known as Perry v. United States, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes observed that Section 4 “was undoubtedly inspired by the desire to put beyond question the obligations of the government issued during the Civil War,” yet he added that “its language indicates a broader connotation.”
Indeed, the second sentence of the Public Debt Clause contains an additional prohibition, just as clear and pointed as the first one, that holds meaning to this day: “But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”
The Justice Department’s announcement this week creating an “anti-weaponization fund” valued at nearly $1.8 billion, pursuant to an out-of-court agreement between President Donald Trump and his own administration, raises a host of constitutional questions under Congress’s power of the purse in the Appropriations Clause, abuse of the judicial power under Article III, and the anti-insurrectionist mandate in the text of the 14th Amendment.
Two police officers who defended the Capitol during the January 6, 2021 insurrection have filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the legality of the fund. Others are expected to follow.
The chief responsibility to enforce the 14th Amendment’s guarantees lies with Congress, which must move expeditiously to block, in keeping with the spirit of Section 4, any funds from the federal treasury to flow to people who participated in and were prosecuted over the assault on our multiracial democracy. As Sherrilyn Ifill, the 14th Amendment Center’s founding director, has noted time and again, the 14th Amendment remains the most potent tool to protect our democracy from enemies within and without.
