The novel and historically relegated Third Amendment recently became relevant and trended online thanks to memes. Memes may be reductionist, but they have the power to inform and provide additional information in an easily understood format.
The protests and direct action in response to George Floyd’s death in police custody have provided opportunities for citizens to learn about their civic rights, thereby increasing their knowledge about governmental funding and raising awareness of how marginalized people have been treated by an unbalanced system. Civic engagement at scale also empowers citizens to learn about the rights often taken for granted — through easily distributed pieces of visual information called memes. Primarily, people hear a lot about the First and Second Amendments as they’re brought up consistently, but on June 4th, the Third Amendment became suddenly relevant.
As the protests around the nation increased in early June, the US National Guard had been deployed in several cities. On Monday, June 1st, 4,500 National Guard service people were sent to Washington, DC, to assist with the policing. By Thursday, DC Mayor Murial Bowser requested the “troops from out-out state” leave Washington, DC. One of the major sticking points was in response to where the troops were being housed while in Washington, DC and the rarely mentioned and temporally outdated Third Amendment became suddenly relevant.
The Third Amendment was a response to the 1765 British Quartering Act and ratified in 1791 into the Constitution in the Bill of Rights. The amendment ensures that in a time of peace, no soldiers should be quartered in any house and in a time of war, only in a manner to be prescribed by law. The Third Amendment today is relegated to history as the Founding Fathers could not have envisioned multi-story hotels, to say nothing about the Internet or the immense world of memes online.
