Today in Supreme Court History: May 10, 1886

5/10/1886: Yick Wo v. Hopkins decided.

Comments

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Facts of the case
An 1880 ordinance of the city of San Francisco required all laundries in wooden buildings to hold a permit issued by the city's Board of Supervisors. The board had total discretion over who would be issued a permit. Although workers of Chinese descent operated 89 percent of the city's laundry businesses, not a single Chinese owner was granted a permit. Yick Wo and Wo Lee each operated laundry businesses without a permit and, after refusing to pay a $10 fine, were imprisoned by the city's sheriff, Peter Hopkins. Each sued for writ of habeas corpus, arguing the fine and discriminatory enforcement of the ordinance violated their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Noting that, on its face, the law is nondiscriminatory, the Supreme Court of California and the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of California denied claims for Yick Wo and Wo Lee, respectively.

Question
Did the unequal enforcement of the city ordinance violate Yick Wo and Wo Lee's rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Conclusion
Yes. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice T. Stanley Matthews, the Court concluded that, despite the impartial wording of the law, its biased enforcement violated the Equal Protection Clause. According to the Court, even if the law is impartial on its face, "if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution." The kind of biased enforcement experienced by the plaintiffs, the Court concluded, amounted to "a practical denial by the State of that equal protection of the law" and therefore violated the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment.

(oyez)

Gotta love the unanimous ones!

[Dan Schiavetta]

My "preview" of various cases "everyone should know", a la Josh:

Brown v. Board of Education: "There is a town in Kansas called Topeka. Children live there. In the early 1950's, they used to go to school."

Marbury v. Madison: "In 1800 John Adams was President. He had a desk. A lot of papers were there for him to sign."

Plessy v. Ferguson: "Trains used to take people places. There was a man named Plessy who liked to ride on trains. They used to go 'choo! choo!'"

Dred Scott v. Sanford: "Dred Scott was a man who was born in Missouri. If you look at the map, Missouri is right in the middle of the country. If it was a stack of bricks, Missouri would hold up Iowa and Minnesota, and maybe Illinois and Wisconsin if you had some glue, but definitely not Indiana."

United States v. Carolene Products: "This case had to do with milk. Milk makes me gassy. I used to order breakfast delivery from Café Snooté, but they kept on putting milk in my coffee despite my order that it be black, with Indonesian sugar. However their caviar is superb."

[Dan Schiavetta]

More "cases everyone should know". Again, I'm trying to impart roughly the same amount of information that Josh does.

Lochner v. New York: "This case is famous because of a dissent by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had a great mustache, and as you might recall was the namesake of the main character on the old TV show 'Green Acres'."

Bakke v. University of California: "Alan Bakke was denied admission to the University of California, Davis Medical School. He wanted to be a doctor. Davis is a town in California. I understand they have a law school there too. But how many of their professors write for Newsweek?"

Griswold v. Connecticut: "The Griswolds wanted to buy birth control. This would allow them to have sex without Mrs. Griswold getting pregnant in Connecticut. Unlike Missouri, Connecticut is a very small state. It could hold up Massachusetts, though with a lot of strain, and maybe Vermont, but add New Hampshire and it all might tip over."

Gideon v. Wainwright: "Gideon got arrested. He was put in jail. The food was pretty bad there, and it was actually pretty onerous that he couldn't order out for breakfast."

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But Prof. Blackman's goal with these blogs is not judicial education.

It's YouTube hits.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes, just let me have some fun here.

[DaivdBehar]

Cappie. Whom did you vote for in 2020? You have a Democrat odor about you coming across the internet.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If you two troublemakers are wondering whether Prof. Volokh will provide a warning, an explanation, or no notice before censoring ou, my experience indicates that it might go any of those three ways.

Sometimes you get a warning -- 'don't do that again' or 'this particular word is prohibited.'

Sometimes, an explanation -- 'I removed your comment because it conflicted with our civility standards'

Sometimes, the comment just vanishes.

You may be jumping up and down on his last good nerve. Good luck.

(The chord that distinguishes this one is the beautiful B7sus2 -- "there was nothing nobody could say" -- but Clarence clocks that final A at 26 seconds.)

[DaivdBehar]

Eugene has written to me about comments. None has ever been removed. I appreciated his personal communication, tried to accommodate him.

[Cal Cetín]

When was the last time you got censored? Was it before or after the mute buttons were installed?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I do not know when the mute function was introduced.

I know Prof. Volokh has censored me a half-dozen times, maybe more, and that sycophantic clingers like you will defend that hypocritical, partisan, viewpoint-driven censorship. Disaffected, obsolete culture war losers need to stick together. Until replacement.

[Frank Drackman]

And Sherriff Hopkins wondered for years why his Uniform shirts smelled like Urine....