Rock the CyberEthics Challenge 2025 – Dive into Digital Wisdom and Win Big!

The Supreme Court decision in Barron v. Baltimore (1833) held that the Bill of Rights, which contains the first ten amendments to the Constitution, applies only to the national government. This means that individuals cannot claim protection under the Bill of Rights against state or local governments; rather, those protections were specifically designed to limit the powers and actions of the federal government.

In this landmark case, John Barron argued that the city of Baltimore had violated his Fifth Amendment rights by damaging his property without just compensation. The Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights does not restrain state and local governments, but is rather a set of limitations on the federal government alone. This decision established a foundational principle regarding the application of the Bill of Rights, which was later modified by subsequent amendments and cases that expanded the applicability of certain protections to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.