The Third Amendment

The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution reads like this:

"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

This law was extremely important to our Founding Fathers, but is not so well known to modern Americans. America's Founders had just experienced the quartering of troops in their homes during the Revolutionary War and before.

The Third Amendment says that troops cannot be quartered in homes at all during peacetime, and only as prescribed by law during wartime.

By the way, in case you aren't sure what "quartering" is referring to, it means that the government cannot "quarter" troops in your home. The word is used in the way that we today would call someone's room his "quarters." Got it?

Third Amendment History

British Troops

Americans' experience with the quartering of troops in their homes began shortly after the French and Indian War ended in 1763. The British Parliament decided it was necessary to keep a permanent supply of troops in the colonies in order to protect them from further uprisings of the French and Indians. This rankled the colonists in two ways. First of all, Parliament wanted them to pay the expenses of housing these troops in America. This violated the precedents of English law that required that all taxation must be with the consent of the people. The colonists reasoned that they had not given their consent to pay for these troops and that, therefore, the requirement that they pay for them was against the law.

Secondly, English law forbade the presence of a standing army, without consent of the people, in preference to a citizen army. Standing armies were viewed as threats to freedom. So, the colonists rightly viewed the presence of a standing army without their consent in their midst as a threat to their freedom. Both of these rights, freedom from taxation without consent and freedom from standing armies without consent, were guaranteed in English law since the English Bill of Rights of 1689. You can read the English Bill of Rights of 1689 here.

Third Amendment history - The First Quartering Act

The first Quartering Act was enacted on May 15, 1765. It required that British soldiers be housed in American barracks and public inns first, but if there was not enough room in these, that other buildings belonging to the citizenry such as stables, alehouses, barns and uninhabited buildings should be used. The Quartering Act required that the citizens who owned the properties must pay for the food for these troops and also stated that the citizens would not receive any compensation for the use of their property. You can read the Quartering Act of 1765 here.

The colonies generally refused to cooperate with the Quartering Act. The resistance was strongest in New York. Violence broke out in August, 1766 between British troops and the colonists over New York's refusal to pay for the quartering of British troops. Parliament suspended the governor and the provincial assembly over this issue. Eventually, the Quartering Act expired in 1770 and was not renewed. It never was successful in its intent to cover the expenses of keeping British troops permanently in America.

Third Amendment history - The Second Quartering Act

On June 2, 1774, an additional Quartering Act was passed by Parliament that was part of a series of acts called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists. This act gave colonial Royal governors the right to house troops in private property (though not in occupied homes) if enough public property was not available. The colonists rejected the use of their private property without their consent, but, of all the Intolerable Acts, this one generated the least dissent. This Quartering Act expired on March 24, 1776. You can read the Quartering Act of 1774 here.

The quartering of troops on private property is one of the grievances of the colonists specifically mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The section that mentions it reads like this:

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us."

Creation of the Third Amendment

As a result of this experience with having their private property used by the government without their permission, early Americans wanted a guarantee that they would be protected from this abuse in the future.

Many people were skeptical that the new Constitution adequately protected their rights and they demanded that a Bill of Rights be added to it. Consequently, James Madison proposed a list of amendments to be considered by the First Congress. The Ten Amendments that were agreed upon, including the 34d Amendment, finally became law on December 15, 1791 and are known as the Bill of Rights. You can read more about the History of the Bill of Rights here.

Third Amendment cases

Supreme Court
of the United States

The Third Amendment is one of the least cited parts of the Constitution in legal cases. It has never been addressed by the Supreme Court in over 200 years, but it has been referred to by the Court a few times. The reason it has been cited so few times is that there have been so few wars fought on American territory, especially since the Civil War. Another reason is that the American army now has substantial military bases to house its soldiers.

The only significant case involving the Third Amendment to be addressed by any court was called Engblom vs. Carey, which was decided in 1982. In this case, several prison officials were evicted from their homes on the prison grounds during a strike. National Guard members had been brought in to act as prison guards during the strike. Some of them were housed in the homes of the missing officials.

The officials sued claiming that the Third Amendment protected them from having military personnel living in their homes. The state's position was that the officials did not own the homes and were therefore not the private property of these officials, and that the Third Amendment could not, therefore, be applied to them.

The officials lost their case originally on the grounds that they were not the owners of the homes, but on appeal, the 2nd Circuit Court agreed with them that their Third Amendment rights had been violated, saying that they had a reasonable right to expect their Third Amendment rights to be protected since they were the current occupants and controllers of the property.

If you would like to read a very lengthy and in depth article about the history of the Third Amendment, please click here.

Thanks for reading about the Third Amendment with
Revolutionary War and Beyond!

If you would like to read about the meanings of each amendment, go to the First Ten Amendments page here.