Updated August 14, 2025

People across political divides unite around shared aspirations for accountability, compassion, dignity, and opportunity in government—even as they hold distinct understandings of how to bring fairness and equal protection to life.

Equal protection, enshrined in the 14th Amendment, and fundamental fairness—a principle woven throughout the Constitution—represent critical cornerstones of America's democratic promise. The Equal Protection Clause arguably marked a profound legal and moral turning point in US history: from a founding that excluded so many to a vision of democracy meant to include and serve all. These principles continue to define American democracy as foundational ideals while remaining sources of ongoing tension as the nation strives to fulfill these promises in practice.

"The Values We Share: Views on Government, Fairness, and Equal Protection in the United States," commissioned by PolicyLink and conducted by Worthy Strategy Group, examined how people across geography and ideology understand fairness and equal protection, and whose responsibility it is to ensure these constitutional principles become realities of everyday life. For more details on the Methodology and Attitudinal Segments, please click here.

Though people share these compelling visions, they hold fundamentally different beliefs about what fairness requires in practice and how government should pursue it. The research reveals three distinct but overlapping lenses through which participants understand fairness:

• Opportunity (everyone should have equal access to succeed)
• Process (rules must be applied consistently to everyone)
• Outcomes (opportunity needs to lead to stability and dignity; outcomes are proof that fairness is working)

These different lenses illuminate not just ideological differences between groups but profound emotional tensions within individuals. Many people are caught between pride in self-reliance and rage at systemic failure. They fear government control but resent being left on their own. They value equality but wrestle with how to reconcile that with people's unequal starting points. 

This summary highlights the key findings from this research about how the cross-section of Americans represented in this study understand fairness and equal protection. More details about participants’ responses about the values that should drive governing and what government must do to actively reflect those values in our democracy, economy, and daily lives can be found here. 

A Shared Start and End Point 

Across multiple lines of difference, the study participants  share a troubling consensus: life in the United States feels like a “rigged game." They want to believe in a nation where rules are fair and protection is for all. But most, regardless of ideology, perceive a system tilted in favor of the powerful and against everyone else. Democracy does not feel representative, and the economy is not built for everyday people.

While people differ on the specific sources of unfairness—some pointing to racial injustice, others to economic inequality—nearly everyone agrees the system is failing. People of all backgrounds pinpointed government as distant, self-serving, only catering to the wealthy, or careless—crushing people through overreach or abandoning them through neglect.

Despite this profound frustration, participants across all backgrounds want to believe in a different future. And when they describe a future where fairness and equal protection are fully realized, they were more aligned than their surface-level disagreements would suggest:

• Everyone would have equal opportunity with a fair starting line
• Each person would have a real voice in politics and decision-making
• Society would be unified but diverse while working toward common goals
• There would be balance, peace, and shared responsibility
• Freedom, opportunity, and happiness would be within reach for all

The Fairness Divides

While participants are united around a shared vision and core values for fair governance, they diverge on the crucial question: What does fairness actually mean in practice? At the heart of this divergence are three different lenses that people use to think about fairness:

• OPPORTUNITY: Reflects a belief that fairness means everyone should have equal access to succeed. This lens focuses on ensuring fair starting points and removing barriers that prevent people from competing on merit.
• PROCESS: Reflects a belief that rules must be applied consistently to everyone. This perspective emphasizes procedural fairness, where the same standards and consequences apply universally, regardless of background or identity.
• OUTCOMES: Reflects a belief that fairness needs to lead to stability and dignity, and outcomes are proof that fairness is real. This view holds that true fairness must be measured by whether people can actually achieve secure, dignified lives.

These  lenses exist on a spectrum rather than as rigid categories. In practice, people may blend or interpret elements of all three even if they emphasize one as their primary framework for understanding fairness. One example of this blending is evident across geographic segments:

• Rural participants overwhelmingly lean toward viewing fairness through the lens of opportunity paired with process. They want everyone to have a shot—but fairness means the rules do not bend. However, there is also a quiet ethic of neighborliness and community care, especially when framed as helping people who are willing to help themselves. 
• Urban participants, shaped by direct experience with systemic barriers, lean much more heavily toward understanding fairness as a fusion of opportunity and outcomes—believing fairness remains unrealized if efforts do not ultimately lead to stability or dignity. 
• Suburban participants live in the balance—valuing clear process and access to opportunity but sensitive to outcomes particularly when they impact children or local families.

Similarly, the attitudinal segments—which are informed by people’s attitudes on racism, inequality, collectivism, and individualism—also correlate with how they prioritize opportunity, process, and outcomes in their understanding of fairness.

• Fairness as Outcomes
  Groups like Antiracism Progressives and Diverse Strivers center their understanding of fairness as opportunity deeply tied to outcomes. For them, creating opportunity without ensuring people can actually achieve dignity and stability is not real fairness. 
• Fairness as Process
  Concerned Conservatives and Racism Skeptics believe consistent processes must sit at the center of fairness and serve as a guardrail against chaos or favoritism. They believe opportunity already exists in America, though they acknowledge access is not always equal. While deeply skeptical of outcomes being promised or engineered by government, they firmly believe that positive outcomes should result from individuals applying effort to the opportunities they are given. Therefore, if access to opportunities is unfair, so are the resulting outcomes. 
• Situational Fairness
  Individualists sit in the middle, sometimes leaning toward conservative views of opportunity as personal responsibility while sympathetic to more equity-oriented arguments when framed locally, practically, or around kids and families. For many individualists, fairness is situational—it depends on context, need, and common sense. They value process because they want things to feel transparent and respectful, especially in their own communities. They'll accept outcome-based policies if they feel locally grounded or address real visible need but resist anything that feels like abstraction or federal overreach.

The Relationship Between Fundamental Fairness and Equal Protection

The introduction of perspectives on equal protection reveals that each attitudinal segment operates from fundamentally different assumptions about the relationship between moral ideals and legal frameworks.

• Fairness and Equal Protection as One Unified Concept
  Most common among Concerned Conservatives, Individualists, and some Racism Skeptics, this view views the concepts as essentially identical. Fairness means following the law consistently, and equal protection means laws that treat everyone the same way. Both represent a single principle: consistent rules with impartial enforcement. 
   
• Fairness as a Value, Equal Protection as a Legal Principle
  More common among Sympathetic Liberals and Diverse Strivers, this perspective distinguishes between aspiration and implementation. Fairness represents the moral ideal of what's right, while equal protection is the legal mechanism designed to achieve that vision. Crucially, this group often believes equal protection falls short of true fairness unless government policies account for different starting points shaped by race, class, or history.
   
• Fairness as Lived Experience, Equal Protection as a Structural Guarantee
  Most common among Antiracism Progressives and some Diverse Strivers, fairness is personal and emotional—captured in questions like "Did I feel respected? Was I heard? Was I treated with dignity?" Equal protection operates at the structural level—"Are there laws and policies that protect me from discrimination and harm?" This group understands fairness as something experienced in daily interactions, while equal protection creates the institutional conditions that make those fair interactions possible.

​​​​​​Altogether, these differences in perspective reflect a deeper tension between ideals of neutrality and the realities of persistent disadvantage. They also help explain why Americans can support the same constitutional principles while disagreeing intensely about policies and practices meant to implement them. The concepts themselves become the grounds for competing visions of what fairness means and how government should uphold it.

The Role of Government vs. Society in Ensuring Fairness

Despite their different understandings of what fairness means, most participants agree that fairness is a shared endeavor that requires government action—to varying degrees—and individual responsibility, with each playing distinct but complementary roles.

They agree that government should, at minimum, serve as the foundation-builder and rule-keeper. Many people described wanting a government that looks like a skilled referee or a lifeguard: a steady, trusted presence that keeps the game fair, protects the vulnerable, and lets everyone play full out. 

This includes:

• Setting clear, consistent rules that apply to everyone
• Removing barriers that prevent fair competition
• Protecting the vulnerable from systemic harm
• Ensuring basic systems (education, infrastructure, safety) function fairly

Yet participants recognized that government alone cannot create the fairness they envision. People across all groups believe that fairness is sustained by mutual care and a sense of shared fate. Even people who value individual responsibility deeply still believe that at the end of the day, we are supposed to look out for each other. This sense of connection translates into concrete expectations about individual and community responsibility, and the belief that individuals must exhibit the actions that make fairness real in daily life by:

• Modeling fair treatment in personal interactions
• Mentoring and supporting others in their communities
• Holding institutions accountable at the local level
• Creating the cultural norms that make fairness feel natural

Tensions and Bridges

Competing understandings of fairness and equal protection—and the role of government—explain the tensions we observe between different groups across attitudes, ideologies, and geography. However, we found that these tensions do not exist solely between groups—profound emotional tensions play out within individuals themselves. 

Many participants find themselves caught between conflicting values: pride in self-reliance alongside rage at systemic failure, fear of government control yet resentment at being left on their own, commitment to equality while wrestling with how to address unequal starting points.

As many people held their own seemingly contradictory emotions, they expressed the different ways they navigate these tensions:

Over and over, participants returned to one core insight: fairness is not static: it is a living system that needs constant balancing: between empathy and accountability, opportunity and effort, universal rules and contextual justice. The emotional unlock is balance—not sameness. They described a world where government and people are “all in” on building fairness—not through force or quick fixes, but organically and over time. It requires steadying what’s out of line and balancing competing needs.

Conclusion

Finding the path to a future where fundamental fairness and equal protection are at the core of government is critical. This research, by offering a more nuanced understanding of beliefs and aspirations across groups, offers some fruitful insights on both the challenges and the potential for moving the nation toward this future.

The research uncovers genuine tensions about what fairness and equal protection mean to people in practice, and government's role in achieving them. Americans approach fairness through different lenses—some prioritize equal opportunity, others consistent processes, and still others outcomes. Similarly, Americans hold competing visions of equal protection: one view emphasizes identical treatment for everyone, while the other requires structural guarantees that address systemic disadvantages. All of these perspectives often seem incompatible, reinforcing policy deadlock and public frustration.

Yet these divisions also coexist with areas of consensus. Participants share deep dissatisfaction with current systems they perceive as fundamentally unfair and enabled by government failure. More importantly, they harbor shared aspirations for future government that would embody accountability and consistency, compassion and empathy, dignity and respect for all people, and genuine opportunity. Across all segments, people can still envision government at its best: a protector of justice, a unifying force, a nurturing caretaker, and a stabilizing presence that ensures equal rules, represents all people, and responds to real community needs.

While some policies may remain incompatible across the full spectrum of views, solutions may emerge from recognizing multiple entry points into shared conversations about creating a fairer society. Three lenses on fairness—opportunity, process, and outcomes—capture simultaneous truths about how fairness is valued across the nation. The ongoing challenge lies in finding pathways forward that honor diverse perspectives while surfacing nuances of alignment that broader public discourse may often fail to reflect.

For example, the emotional breakthrough for many participants was recognizing that fairness means balance, not sameness. People can agree that government must set the foundation, and that society must take responsibility for building the house through both individual responsibility and collective care. This reframes fairness as an active, shared ethic that honors both personal effort and mutual obligation. These points of alignment offer a guiding light forward in our work to build a country where  fairness is not left to chance, but is intentionally built into how we govern ourselves.