<Li> California--May 6, 1959 </Li> <Li> Kentucky--March 30, 1976 (after rejection--January 8, 1867) </Li> <P> Since Ohio and New Jersey re-ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 2003, all U.S. states that existed during Reconstruction have ratified the amendment . </P> <P> Section 1 of the amendment formally defines United States citizenship and also protects various civil rights from being abridged or denied by any state or state actor . Abridgment or denial of those civil rights by private persons is not addressed by this amendment; the Supreme Court held in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) that the amendment was limited to "state action" and, therefore, did not authorize the Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals or organizations (though Congress can sometimes reach such discrimination via other parts of the Constitution). U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley commented in the Civil Rights Cases that "individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject - matter of the (14th) Amendment . It has a deeper and broader scope . It nullifies and makes void all state legislation, and state action of every kind, which impairs the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, or which injures them in life, liberty or property without due process of law, or which denies to any of them the equal protection of the laws ." </P>

Define the purpose of the constitutional amendment passed as a result of the 1932 election