As much as I'd like to agree with you, apparently the 14th Amendment does NOT extend the limitations of government enumerated in the Bill of Rights to the states. That is what I had originally thought as well, but the Supreme Court has ruled differently..
I've provided some info on the 14th Amendment that I had found a the following link;
The Constitution For The United States - Its Sources and Its Application
Article XIV
Proposed by Congress June 16, 1866; proclaimed adopted July 21, 1868. 171
See Also Utah Supreme Court Opinion, Dyett vs Turner, a March 22, 1968 opinion of the Utah Supreme Court. It is the official view of the Court on the flawed nature of the so-called Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Section 1. 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.
171 The Thirteenth Amendment was found to be not enough. Reviewing the history of the times, the Supreme Court pointed out that in some States the former slaves were "forbidden to appear in the towns in any other character than menial servants" that they were required to reside upon and cultivate the land "without the right to purchase or own it"; that they were excluded from many occupations of gain and were 'not permitted to give testimony in the courts in any case where a white man was a party"; that laws were passed imposing heavy fines on vagrants and loiterers, who, if unable to pay the fines, were sold to the highest bidder. "These circumstances", said the Supreme Court, "whatever of falsehood or misconception may have been mingled with their presentation, forced upon the statesmen who had conducted the Federal Government in safety through the crisis of the rebellion and who supposed that by the Thirteenth Article of Amendment they had secured the result of their labors, the conviction that something more was necessary in the way of constitutional protection to the unfortunate race who had suffered so much." c51
Hence the Fourteenth Amendment.
This Amendment made the Negro not only a citizen of the United States but also of the State of his residence. It struck the word "white" from the constitutions of northern States which had limited citizenship to white males. In North and South the Negro became possessed in law of all the rights of citizenship. c17
The citizen was not, under the theory of States' rights, in contact with the National Government. He owed allegiance to his State, and the State dealt with the Nation. That theory was definitely set aside by this Amendment, which made all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof citizens of both the Nation and the State, owing allegiance to both authorities. James Wilson of Pennsylvania stated 19 this doctrine clearly in the Constitutional Convention.
The contention was made in the first great case to arise under this Amendment, which did not involve the Negro at all, the controversy being between rival business houses, that the Amendment originated a new citizenship for all, which supplanted former State citizenship and changed the rights attending it. That would mean that the National Government would now be the source of all those rights of a fundamental character which belong to the citizens of all free governments by virtue of their manhood, and for the protection (not creation) of which all just governments are formed. The Supreme Court rejected (1873) the contention and said that the Amendment did not disclose "any purpose to destroy the main features of the general system." It held that the command that "no State shall . . . abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" does not prevent a State from abridging privileges of State citizenship as distinguished from privileges of National citizenship. This momentous decision, involving the preservation of State citizenship and State rights, was, like that upholding the power of the President in the Civil War to blockade ports and take any steps necessary to preserve the life of the Nation, rendered by a majority of one vote.
In the Dred Scott case (1856), brought by a negro servant of a surgeon in the United States army, who had been taken into Illinois and other free territory and who claimed for that reason the right to liberty, as the negro slave Somerset had by the decision of Lord Mansfield been liberated when he was taken from Virginia to England, the Supreme Court held that the Negro was "not intended to be included under the word 'citizen' in the Constitution". for which reason he had no standing in court. By this Amendment he became a citizen of the Nation and a citizen of his State, and possessed of the benefits of all State and National constitutions and laws. The fugitive slave provision 121 was inserted in the Constitution to prevent the application in this country of the rule announced in the Somerset case. c16, c51
"While the Fourteenth Amendment was intended primarily for the benefit of the negro race," said a Federal court, "it also confers the right of citizenship upon persons of all other races,... born or naturalized in the United States." But a person born in the United States and not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" does not become a citizen, such as the child of a foreign minister or consul. c51
The refusal of Congress to permit the naturalization of Chinese was held by the Supreme Court (1898) not to exclude from the benefit of this Amendment a Chinese "born . . . in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." While the parents were subjects of the Emperor of China, they were permanently domiciled in the United States and carrying on business. The definition of "citizen" in this Amendment is only an affirmation of the ancient rule of citizenship by birth within the territory of allegiance. The alien owes allegiance to the country of his residence -- he is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" -- and therefore his children become citizens by birth. c15, c51
An act of 1907 expatriating an American woman marrying a foreigner, even though remaining in the United States, sustained by the Supreme Court as constitutional, was amended in 1922 so that expatriation results only from her residing two years continuously in her husband's country or five years outside of the United States. c118
After the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted a woman in Missouri, where the right to vote was limited to males, sued the registrar because he refused (1872) to put her name on the list of voters. She contended that as she was a "citizen of the United States" under the Amendment, the State could not "abridge" her right as such citizen to vote for the presidential electors. The Supreme Court, denying her claim (1874), said that as she was a citizen born of citizen parents before the Amendment, her status with respect to voting was not changed by it, because the right to vote before the Amendment was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship. That was demonstrated by the necessity for the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected the Negro from being excluded from voting because of color. That Amendment did not affect the Negro's wife, who remained debarred on account of sex. But she became entitled to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment removed that bar.c116, c118
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;172
172 This was held by the Supreme Court to mean, as the language imports, the privileges and immunities of National citizenship and not to include those belonging to the citizen of the State. It is a prohibition, not respecting action by an individual or by a group of individuals, but only action by the legislative, the executive, or the judicial department of a State government. The Supreme Court held (1897) that the State acted, and not the individual, where the law empowered the county judge to select jurors and he rejected Negroes. But not so where in another State white jurors only were selected, there being no State law on the subject; that action was by individuals. This command is not violated by State laws fairly regulating the qualifications of jurors.
The fundamental rights protected by the first ten Amendments against National invasion were not, the Supreme Court has said (1900), by this clause converted into or superseded by rights or immunities which the State cannot touch. State action is no further restrained than it was before, except in the particulars clearly within the purpose of this Amendment. Accordingly a State law limiting the length of a day's work in mines and smelters was held (1896) by the Supreme Court to deny no National immunity or privilege of the employer under this clause. The subject involved in that case was one affecting the citizen of the State and not the citizen of the United States. The relation between employer and employee is one to be supervised by the police power of the State, except that the Nation, under the commerce clause, has dealt with the safety, the hours, and the wages of employees of railways in interstate commerce. c63, c88
The laws enacted by the States for the benefit of the working classes have been generally held by the Supreme Courts of the States not to deny to the employer any constitutional privilege, and the Supreme Court of the United States has sustained such decisions when cases have been carried to it. The Supreme Court held (1917) that no privilege or immunity of National citizenship was abridged by a State law limiting the length of the day of workers, or by another for paying wages in cash. While the right to labor and the privilege of organizing are fundamental, under State citizenship, they are secured by State law and not by this Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld (1915) the law of a State, which was challenged as abridging the privilege of citizens of the United States under this clause, requiring that only citizens of the United States be employed on public works and that citizens of the State be preferred. But while the State as an employer may thus select its employes, it cannot control other employers; and a State constitutional provision requiring that eighty percent of the employes in mines and smelters be natives of the United States was held by the Supreme Court (1915) to "abridge the privileges" of naturalized citizens of the United States in violation of this clause.c42, c51, c63, c88
The privilege of a child to attend the public schools is one springing from the State and not the Nation, and therefore the child cannot assert a constitutional right to admission under this clause. Nor is it the denial of a privilege of National citizenship, the Supreme Court held (1915), for a State to enact that a student entering its university must renounce his allegiance to any Greek-letter or like fraternity.
State laws forbidding litigants to remove cases to the Federal courts have been uniformly held to abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. In 1914 the Supreme Court said that a State cannot penalize the assertion by a citizen of a Federal or National right.
While a corporation is a "person" within this Amendment, it is not a "citizen" of the United States whose "privileges or immunities" a State is forbidden to abridge. A State may therefore impose upon a corporation created by another State restrictive conditions respecting its doing business (but not interstate commerce) within the first named State.c28, c29
Many forms of regulation by States have been held by State supreme courts and by the Supreme Court of the United States not to be abridgments under this clause of the rights or privileges of the citizens of the United States, such as the regulation of professions and occupations, of the manufacture of foods, of jury trials and criminal prosecutions, and so on.
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; 173
173 In the Fifth Amendment the Nation is forbidden 151 to deprive any one "of life, liberty or property without due process of law"; and here the like command is issued by the people to the State. In the beginning it was National power that was feared. Experience later taught that the power of the State also may be tyrannical. Due process of law means, said the Supreme Court in a late case (1908), that "no change in ancient procedure can be made which disregards those fundamental principles... which... protect the citizen in his private right and guard him against the arbitrary action of the government."
Private property is taken for public use in opening streets in cities, in constructing railways and canals, in erecting public buildings, in laying out public parks, and for kindred purposes. The owner cannot be deprived of his property for such purposes by the State without due process of law, that is, without a full hearing and adequate compensation.
In 1884 it was held by the Supreme Court of the United States that a law of California under which a person accused of crime was brought to trial, convicted, and sentenced to death under an "information" or written charge by the prosecuting attorney instead of under an indictment by a grand jury 148 did not violate the due process clause. The grand jury guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment is granted against National power and not against the State.
And it was later held (1900) by the Supreme Court that due process of law was not denied to the accused by a statute of Utah under which he was convicted by eight of the twelve jurors, as the "impartial jury" (twelve men agreeing unanimously) guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment153 must be provided only in Federal courts. c62
The "liberty" which this clause safeguards is not merely the freedom of the person from unjust or unlawful imprisonment. It embraces also the free use of his faculties in all lawful ways.
The liberty of the citizen to make contracts is not denied by a State law limiting the hours of the day of labor and fixing a fine for each violation, the Supreme Court held (1908), because liberty is not absolute when the welfare of society is involved. And so the Supreme Court upheld (1914) as constitutional under this clause the law of a State forbidding under penalty that women be employed longer than a designated day.
In 1937 the Supreme Court upheld a law (1913) of the State of Washington establishing wages and working conditions for women and children, overruling in principle a decision (p. 216) in 1923, and others following it, that a law requiring minimum wages to women and children regardless of their earning capability took private property for public welfare in violation of this Clause. c63
The Supreme Court held (1905) that personal liberty under this clause was not infringed by a law for compulsory vaccination when smallpox was prevalent and increasing.
This clause was held (1915) contravened by a State law forbidding the employing of any foreign-born person who was not naturalized or who had not declared his intention to become a citizen, as the alien has the like right to liberty and property and the "equal protection of the laws" that a native enjoys.c1
State laws prohibiting the employing of children under specified ages and in employments named have been upheld as denying no right to the employer, the parent, or the child. This clause was not violated by a State law imposing upon manufacturers, under heavy penalty, the absolute duty of making expenditures for safeguarding their machinery to prevent injury to employes. Laws prohibiting the payment of wages in scrip or orders on stores, laws requiring semi-monthly payment of wages in some employments, laws prohibiting the assignment of wages not yet earned without the written consent of the wife of the employe, and many other kinds of laws for the help of the working classes have been upheld by the Supreme Courts of the States and the Supreme Court of the United States. c63
The Supreme Court of Colorado held (1921) an amendment to the Constitution of that State (1913) a denial of due process of law because it prohibited the courts of the State (except the Supreme Court) from passing upon certain State and Federal constitutional questions and left it for the people to determine at the polls whether a decision of the Supreme Court should become effective at all. As the National Constitution is the supreme law of the land, 133 and as "the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding", 134 the duty thus placed upon the judges of State courts to uphold the Constitution of the United States could not be stripped of them by any act of either the legislature or the people. c32, c37, c61
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 174
174 By Section 2 of Article IV 119 "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." That is, a citizen of one State doing business in another State cannot be denied the privileges and immunities of the citizens of that State. But the clause in this Amendment was designed to prevent a State from making discriminations between its own citizens. While it was written primarily for the liberated Negro (who is not mentioned in the Amendment), the language is without limitation, extending to "any person", and it has been applied in upwards of a thousand cases in State and National courts to every conceivable form of inequality arising or alleged to arise out of the laws of States.
An Act of Congress fixing punishment for three or more persons conspiring to deprive another of the equal protection of the laws was held invalid by the Supreme Court (1883) because the Fourteenth Amendment is a limitation upon the State and not upon persons. The word "persons" includes a resident alien or a corporation.c18
But this language does not prevent reasonable classification as long as all within a class are treated alike. The design of this clause was "to prevent any person or class of persons from being singled out as a special subject for discriminating and hostile legislation." This does not prevent, for example, the imposition of different species of taxes. Thus while houses and lands are taxed upon their actual value, railroad companies may be required to pay taxes upon their gross income, and neither owner has a ground of complaint that he has been denied the equal protection of the laws. So taxes on inheritances, which the Supreme Court held to be by permission of law contrary to the decisions of supreme courts of several States, may be graduated according to the size of the estate one receives upon the death of another, and the one inheriting a large estate cannot complain that the scale of rates applied in his case is higher than that used for a smaller inheritance. The provision of a State homestead law excluding Negroes from the benefits of the act denied equal protection and was therefore held (1885) unconstitutional. Because a State law requiring voters to read excludes a greater number of Negroes than others, it does not therefore deny equal protection. The Supreme Court upheld (1896) a State law requiring railway companies to provide separate accommodations for white and colored passengers; with equal accommodations equal protection was preserved. And so where school for Chinese offered the advantages of other schools it was held (1902) that equal protection was not denied. A law putting in effect the Australian system of balloting was held (1874) not to deny equal protection to the blind or to others physically or educationally unable to vote. A city ordinance requiring that the hair of prisoners be clipped was held (1879) invalid as directed against Chinese and imposing a degrading and cruel punishment. A privilege tax of $25 on business men resident in the State and a tax of $100 on non-residents was held (1919) to deny equal protection.c42, c78
The Supreme Court held (1920) it within the police power of a State to enact that natural gas coming from wells within ten miles of an incorporated town or an industrial plant should not be burned for its products (such as carbon black) unless the remainder of the heat contained in the gas should be fully and actually applied for other manufacturing purposes or for domestic uses. A company which was burning gas in making carbon black for printer's ink claimed that the legislation discriminated respecting owners of wells and producers of carbon black within ten miles of a town and those beyond that radius, and that it was therefore a denial of that "equal protection" which a State is forbidden to withhold. The court said that the classification of users, appearing to have been made for the conservation of natural resources and not arbitrarily, was valid. c42, c120
A city ordinance prohibiting Negroes from residing in blocks in which the majority of the houses were occupied by white persons, and in like manner prohibiting white persons from residing in blocks largely occupied by Negroes, was by the Supreme Court held (1917) unconstitutional, where a Negro purchased property and could not occupy it under the ordinance.c78
But the Supreme Court of California held (1920) that a condition subsequent in a deed to land, that the premises would revert to the grantor or seller if occupation of them should ever be permitted to any but a Caucasian, did not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment, as that prohibits action, not by an individual, but by a State.c78
Equal protection was held (1892) denied by a State law forbidding mining companies to keep general stores for the patronage of the employees, because no such limitation was placed upon other employers.
The foregoing examples are sufficient to show the meaning of the equality-of-treatment clause and to illustrate that the Constitution remains a much-used and very serviceable instrument.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. 175
175 Up to this time members of the House of Representatives were allowed to each State in proportion to the white population and three fifths of the slaves11, but this provision made each Negro count as one.
But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.176
176 This enables the Nation to inflict punishment upon the State for preventing citizens from voting -- from voting for National officers not only, but also some officers of the State, as the executive who calls elections to fill vacancies in Congress, the judges who may pass upon questions of election, and the members of the legislature who in 1866 (but not since the Seventeenth Amendment, 1913) elected the Senators of the United States. A State law or constitution requiring of voters ability to read and write does not contravene this provision. Congress never has exerted its power under this Amendment to reduce the number of a State's representatives in the National House.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any once, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same. or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.177
177 It was claimed by Jefferson Davis, who had been President of the Confederate States of America (1861- 1865), and who had in 1845 been a member of the National Congress, that the punishment specified in this Section, which prevented him from ever holding any office, National or State, superseded in his case the punishment for treason which Congress had axed115 and that therefore the indictment charging him with treason must be quashed. The point was argued, but before it was decided by the court a proclamation of general amnesty was issued by the President, and later the indictment was dismissed. On Christmas day, 1868, President Johnson issued a general proclamation of amnesty, granting "unconditionally and without reservation" to all who had been engaged in the Southern cause, "a full pardon."
Not until June 6, 1898, did Congress remove the last vestige of this disability. On March 31, 1896, Congress repealed an earlier act forbidding that any one who had left the army or navy of the United States to aid the Confederacy should ever hold place in the army or navy again. But the Act of Oblivion came two years later, when the disability imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment was removed as to all. War with Spain had begun in April of that year. Among the most eager volunteers were "elderly Southerners" who had served as soldiers or officers in the Confederate army. General Joseph Wheeler, a noted cavalry leader of the South, and a son of Robert E. Lee were among those to receive military commissions from President McKinley, the Commander in Chief, who had served in the Union army in the Civil War.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. 178
178 The debt incurred for the Union during the Civil War, including bounties and pensions, was by the adoption of this Amendment acknowledged and proportionately assumed by the southern States; and at the same time they were rendered incapable of paying any part of the debt (over $1,400,000,000) which they owed to their own citizens and to England, France, and other countries. The southern States lost also the value of the emancipated slaves.
This section deals only with what the Nation and the State shall do. An individual was held bound by the Supreme Court to pay after emancipation the price which he had agreed before the Civil War to give for a slave, when such a contract was legal, for it was out of the power of a State to impair71, as it undertook to do, the obligation of such a contract.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. 179
179 Appropriate legislation by Congress means such as is "adapted to the mischief and wrong which the Amendment was intended to provide against" -- that is, to prevent oppressive action, not by individuals, but by State governments. Therefore the Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875, which declared that all persons (meaning the emancipated Negroes) should be "entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of public amusement", was held (1883) by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional as to the sections which provided punishment for persons who should interfere with the rights mentioned, for the prohibition of the amendment is directed only against action by States.c18
"Until some State law has been passed," said the Supreme Court, "or some State action through its officers or agents has been taken adverse to the rights of the citizens sought to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, no legislation of the United States under said Amendment, nor any proceeding under such legislation, can be called into activity."