Bill of Rights · 3rd Amendment
Third Amendment
Ratified December 15, 1791
Verbatim
Exact text as ratified.
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.
Plain English
A translation that drops archaic words but keeps the meaning, including the parts courts still argue about.
The government cannot force you to house soldiers in your home during peacetime. During wartime, it can only do so under rules set by Congress.
What this means for you
This amendment is almost never invoked in modern life. The U.S. military has not tried to quarter soldiers in private homes in any meaningful way since the 1800s. The amendment exists because it was a real grievance against the British Crown — colonial families were sometimes forced to board British soldiers — and the founders wanted to make sure it could never happen here.
If a soldier ever showed up at your door demanding to stay, you could refuse, and the law would be on your side. In wartime, Congress would have to pass a specific law authorizing quartering, and even then, only under the rules that law set out.
About
The Third Amendment is the least-litigated amendment in the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has never decided a case primarily on Third Amendment grounds. The closest the federal courts have come was Engblom v. Carey (1982), where the Second Circuit ruled that the amendment applied to National Guard members occupying striking prison guards' on-site housing, and even that case is rarely cited.
The amendment is mainly historical. It addresses a specific complaint listed in the Declaration of Independence, that the British Crown had forced colonists to house soldiers, and ensures the new federal government could never do the same. Its quietness is part of what it accomplished. By being explicit, it made the abuse it prohibited so clearly illegal that it stopped happening.