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The Civil Rights Cases

Supreme Court of the United States · 1883 · Constitutional Law

Constitutional LawPropertyFourteenth AmendmentThirteenth AmendmentState actionCivil rightsPublic accommodationsstate action doctrine

Facts

The challenged statute declared that all persons were entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of public amusement, without racial distinctions or distinctions based on previous condition of servitude. It also imposed civil and criminal penalties on any person who denied those equal accommodations and privileges. The cases arose within States, not in the Territories or the District of Columbia. The statute, as applied in these cases, operated directly on individual denials of access and was not tied to any particular state law or state action alleged to violate the Constitution.

Issue

Did Congress have constitutional authority under the Fourteenth or Thirteenth Amendment to enact the first and second sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which directly prohibited private individuals from denying equal access to public accommodations within the States?

Rule

Under the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress may enact only appropriate corrective legislation aimed at counteracting prohibited state laws or state action; it may not create a general code regulating private rights or punish purely private conduct unconnected to state authority. Under the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress may directly legislate against slavery and its badges and incidents, but a private refusal of admission to an inn, public conveyance, or place of amusement, without state sanction, is not slavery, involuntary servitude, or a badge or incident thereof.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

In Ohio, the legislature has enacted no discriminatory lodging law, and state courts routinely entertain tort and contract suits by all residents. Congress passes a statute making it a federal misdemeanor for any privately owned hotel to refuse a room to a guest because of race, and Victor Lane, owner of the Buckeye Crest Hotel in Columbus, is prosecuted after turning away Naomi Price.

Victor moves to dismiss, arguing Congress lacked authority under the Fourteenth Amendment. How should the court rule?

Explanation. The majority held that the Fourteenth Amendment is prohibitory on the States, not on private individuals. Congress may enact only corrective legislation aimed at state laws or state action adverse to Fourteenth Amendment rights. A statute that simply makes a private hotel owner's discrimination a federal offense everywhere is primary and direct legislation, not corrective legislation, and is therefore beyond Congress's Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power.