NEW YORK — Ava DuVernay announced on Thursday that she has made a documentary for Netflix on the 14th Amendment. Netflix stated the same day that it will release the film, titled "14th, later in 2026.

The documentary marks a return to nonfiction for DuVernay and serves as a follow-up to her 2016 film 13th, which examined the intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States. In a statement, DuVernay said her new film will detail how the 14th Amendment became a permanent argument." She added, "If ‘13th’ asked who gets caged, then ‘14th’ asks who gets counted. The film will feature politicians, historians, and cultural voices to explore the amendment’s legacy and its relevance to contemporary political debates.

DuVernay, who directed the films Selma" and "Origin, emphasized that her latest project is not a historical retrospective but a present-focused inquiry. This is not a film about the past tense of freedom. I’m not interested in asking you to look back. The film asks what kind of country is being written beneath our feet now … while we’re busy believing the stories we’ve all been told, she said.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 during Reconstruction, granted liberty and rights to formerly enslaved people following the Civil War. It states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The amendment nullified the 1857 Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, which had held that those descended from slaves could not be citizens.

The documentary arrives in the wake of a major Supreme Court ruling in June 2026. The Court struck down by a 6-3 vote an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on the first day of his second term that sought to restrict birthright citizenship. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court upholding the protections of the 14th Amendment, stating that the ruling makes a citizen of anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions.

Roberts wrote, "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’" He added, "We keep that promise today."

The 14th Amendment has been a target of legal challenges from President Donald Trump, who vowed to continue to contest the Supreme Court’s ruling. "This miscarriage of justice will destroy America if they don’t change their absolutely insane decision," Trump said.

DuVernay’s documentary enters a national conversation reignited by recent legal and political efforts to reinterpret or limit the scope of the 14th Amendment, particularly its guarantee of birthright citizenship. The June 2026 Supreme Court decision reaffirmed a foundational element of American civil rights, drawing a direct line from Reconstruction-era reforms to modern constitutional protections. By framing the 14th Amendment as "a permanent argument," the film situates current debates about citizenship, belonging, and equality within a long historical arc of contested rights.

The project also continues DuVernay’s focus on structural inequality and constitutional interpretation. Where "13th linked the abolition of slavery to the rise of mass incarceration, 14th" examines how citizenship itself has been both expanded and challenged since the Civil War. With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling and ongoing political rhetoric, the documentary addresses a live constitutional question that affects millions of people born in the United States.