Dissent Harlan | End date 1883 | |
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Full case name United States v. Stanley; United States v. Ryan; United States v. Nichols; United States v. Singleton; Robinson et ux. v. Memphis & Charleston R.R. Co. Citations 109 U.S. 3 (more)
3 S. Ct. 18; 27 L. Ed. 835 Majority Bradley, joined by Waite, Miller, Field, Woods, Matthews, Gray, Blatchford Ruling court Supreme Court of the United States Similar Plessy v Ferguson, Slaughter‑House Cases, United States v Cruikshank, Shelley v Kraemer, Brown v Board of Education | ||
Why do most civil rights cases go to federal court sheppard white kachergus p a
The Civil Rights Cases, 109 US 3 (1883) were a group of five US Supreme Court cases consolidated into one issue. Against the famous dissent of Justice Harlan, a majority held the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional, because Congress lacked authority to regulate private affairs under the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the Thirteenth Amendment "merely abolishes slavery". The Civil Rights Act of 1875 banned racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations, rather than state and local governments, saying "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude".
Contents
Civil rights cases
Facts
The decision itself involved five consolidated cases (United States v. Stanley, United States v. Ryan, United States v. Nichols, United States v. Singleton, and Robinson v. Memphis & Charleston Railroad, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S. Ct. 18, 27 L. Ed. 835.) coming from different lower courts in which black Americans had sued theaters, hotels and transit companies that had refused them admittance or excluded them from "white only" facilities.
Judgment
The Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision by Justice Joseph P. Bradley, held that the language of the 14th Amendment, which prohibited denial of equal protection by a state, did not give Congress power to regulate these private acts, because it was the result of conduct by private individuals, not state law or action, that blacks were suffering. Section five empowers Congress only to enforce the prohibition on state action. Legislation by Congress on subjects which are within the domain of the state are not authorized by the 14th Amendment. Private acts of racial discrimination were simply private wrongs that the national government was powerless to correct.
Bradley J said the following.
Dissent
Justice Harlan dissented against the Court's narrow interpretation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments for all five of the cases. As he noted, Congress was attempting to overcome the refusal of the states to protect the rights denied to African Americans that white citizens took as their birthright. Harlan mentioned that private railroads (Olcott v. Supervisors 1872 83 U.S. 678, 16 Wall. 694) are by law public highways, and it is the function of the government to make and maintain highways for the conveyance of the public; that innkeepers have long been held to be "a sort of public servants" (Rex v. Ivens 1835 7 Car. & P. 213) that had no right to deny to anyone "conducting himself in a proper manner" admission to his inn; and that public amusements are maintained under a license coming from the State. He also found that the lack of protection from the 1875 Civil Rights Act would result in the violation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, largely on the same grounds.
His judgment went as follows.
Significance
The decision met with public protest across the country, and led to regular "indignation meetings" held in numerous cities. The Supreme Court decision severely restricted the power of the federal government to guarantee equal status under the law to blacks. State officials in the South took advantage of the eclipsed role of Congress in the prohibition of racial discrimination and proceeded to embody individual practices of racial segregation into laws that legalized the treatment of blacks as second-class citizens for another seventy years. The court's decision thus ultimately led to the enactment of state laws, such as Jim Crow Laws, which codified what had previously been individual adherence to the practice of racial segregation. Several northern and western states however did not follow suit and began instead enacting their own bans on discrimination in public places.
Harlan correctly predicted the decision's long-term consequences: it put an end to the attempts by Radical Republicans to ensure the civil rights of blacks and ushered in the widespread segregation of blacks in housing, employment and public life that confined them to second-class citizenship throughout much of the United States until the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.
Furthermore, "[i]n the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, the federal government adopted as policy that allegations of continuing slavery were matters whose prosecution should be left to local authorities only – a de facto acceptance that white southerners could do as they wished with the black people in their midst."
The decision that the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Acts were unconstitutional has not been overturned; on the contrary, the Supreme Court reaffirmed this limited reading of the Fourteenth Amendment in United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000), in which it held that Congress did not have the authority to enact parts of the Violence Against Women Act.
The Court has, however, upheld more recent civil rights laws based on other powers of Congress. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 generally revived the ban on discrimination in public accommodations that was in the Civil Rights Act of 1875, but under the Commerce Clause of Article I instead of the 14th Amendment; the Court held it to be constitutional in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964).