2020 Constitutional Reform Country Report: The USA

The struggle over the scope and meaning of equal citizenship, which engulfed the American public during the Trump presidency, intensified during 2020. The conflicts over health inequality, court capture, and access to the ballot were also conflicts over the scope and nature of equal citizenship for minority groups. The major events of 2020--the impeachment of President Trump, the nation's response to COVID-19, the George Floyd protests, a conservative SCOTUS, and the election of a woman of color as the vice-president --were embedded in this larger struggle to define the contours of full American citizenship. Part of these debates played out in the form of proposed constitutional amendments. As a result, this chapter explores how formal and informal methods of constitutional change were deployed to advance competing conceptions of equal citizenship in response to the controversies of the day.