Today in Supreme Court History: May 10, 1886

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

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (decided May 10, 1886): Fourteenth Amendment violated by ordinance allowing denial without recourse of permits to laundries in wooden buildings; effect was to discriminate against Chinese who though not citizens had equal rights

NBC v. United States, 319 U.S. 190 (decided May 10, 1943): FCC can regulate not only technical and engineering aspects of radio but also content and consider antitrust implications (striking down challenge to new regulations allowing FCC to determine if “detrimental to the public interest”

Lockerty v. Phillips, 319 U.S. 182 (decided May 10, 1943): upholding Congress’s power to establish the Emergency Court of Appeals with exclusive jurisdiction over wage and price disputes and even as to Constitutionality of related wartime provisions (court was not disbanded until 1962)

United States v. Noveck, 271 U.S. 201 (decided May 10, 1926): whopper told under oath (“I owed $1,484.84 on an income of $16,251.66”when in fact it was $45,664.91 on $124,127.13) barred by three-year perjury statute even though statute for defrauding United States is six years

Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., 237 U.S. 474 (decided May 10, 1915): the Justices in this original jurisdiction case reach different findings of fact; 6 – 3 decision places restrictions on copper smelters just past Tennessee line ruining vegetation downwind in Georgia after long dispute about remediation and disagreement about terms (this reminds me of Lou Costello’s failure to understand Sidney Fields’s references to “ore” and “smelting” — it’s on youtube)

Cumberland Glass Mfg. Co. v. De Witt, 237 U.S. 447 (decided May 10, 1915): business coming out of bankruptcy could still sue creditor for tortious interference with contract where creditor did not raise issue in composition proceeding; 5 – 4 decision

Leiter v. United States, 271 U.S. 204 (decided May 10, 1926): private landlord renting under 5-year lease to Treasury Department agency can be stiffed for rent after one year if that’s all the original appropriation for the office was for (agency was then folded into another agency)

United States v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Co., 237 U.S. 410 (decided May 10, 1915): “transfer trains” (not on any route, but used to move cars from one yard to another) are within scope of Safety Appliance Act (penalized for not having operable air brakes on 75% of cars)

Tindal v. Wesley, 167 U.S. 204 (decided May 10, 1897): no Eleventh Amendment impediment to sue state for property held for a private party

Mandeville Island Farms v. American Crystal Sugar Co., 334 U.S. 219 (decided May 10, 1948): local agreement between sugar refiners making them exclusive purchasers of beets (which have to be processed near location of harvesting) violated Sherman Act even though sugar not sold across state lines until after refinement

[John F. Carr]

Noveck construed the statute of limitations to be based on the elements of the crime charged, not the facts of the case.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes

[apedad]

Re: Yick Wo vs. Hopkins

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 (Unanimous!)

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)

Yick Wo had little application shortly after the decision. In fact, it was not long after that the Court developed the "separate but equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, in practice allowing discriminatory treatment of African Americans. Yick Wo was never applied at the time to Jim Crow laws. However, by the 1950s, the Warren Court used the principle established in Yick Wo to strike down several attempts by states and municipalities in the Deep South to limit the political rights of blacks. Yick Wo has been cited in well over 150 Supreme Court cases since it was decided. (wiki)

Correct decision and I’m glad it was unanimous.

[SRG]

Looks like a forerunner of "disparate impact" cases.

[Gandydancer]

No. Intentionally disparate enforcement has nothing to do with “disparate impact”.

[F.D. Wolf]

I don’t think the Court was particularly offended by the racial discrimination, a state practice it consistently allowed at the time; I think it was offended by the infringement on business and property rights, interests the “Businessman’s Court” was zealous about protecting. This case came right at the cusp of what is generally considered the “Lochner Era” which might be said to have begun in roughly the late 1880s and to have ended definitively in 1937 with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish.

[Syd Henderson]

I've always wondered how some of the same justices who decided Yick Wo could also vote in the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson. Good point, F. D. Wolf.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Perhaps the distinction is that in Plessy, black passengers were not actually denied anything. They had seats available to them in the "colored" cars.

[Frank Drackman]

Segregation by race??? Glad that doesn't happen anymore.

[not guilty]

Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), is one of those scarce-as-hen's-teeth cases where a selective prosecution defense has been successfully asserted.

[John F. Carr]

Do you think Trump's lawyers will try to add to the list? His notice of removal of his state criminal case to federal court does not cite Yick Wo v. Hopkins. It quotes dicta by Justice Brennan, "It is not at all inconceivable, however, that Congress’ concern about local hostility to federal authority could come into play". https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67326478/people-of-the-state-of-new-york-v-trump/

[Dan Schiavetta]

“It is not at all inconceivable that this is the law on this issue” doesn’t sound like a strong argument.

[not guilty]

I doubt it. 28 U.S.C. § 1455(b)(2) states:

A notice of removal of a criminal prosecution shall include all grounds for such removal. A failure to state grounds that exist at the time of the filing of the notice shall constitute a waiver of such grounds, and a second notice may be filed only on grounds not existing at the time of the original notice. For good cause shown, the United States district court may grant relief from the limitations of this paragraph.

A failure to expressly invoke selective prosecution as a defense in the notice of removal should operate as a waiver.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is not going to end well -- and I wonder how much of the legal profession will be destroyed in the process.

[not guilty]

What is not going to end well, and how not? And where is the threat to any part of the legal profession?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Addressing the last part first, remember how the legal profession changed as a result of Watergate? Remember how different things were in 1979 than they'd been in 1969? That *happened* -- and I believe you lived through it.

What's not going to end well is all of this politically-motivated litigation directed at conservatives, no longer just Trump as there is now a totally bullshite indictment of George Santos.

Hopefully this will end without a shooting civil war, but I see the end of the legal profession being a self-governing one. Maybe even a court dedicated to punishing rogue prosecutors, which is what this is.

[Gandydancer]

If Santos applied for and collected unemployment in NY while working in FL then it's not "totally bullshite".

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Hopefully this will end without a shooting civil war

Do all blogs operated by law professors feature repeated calls for civil war, shooting war, race war, shooting civil war, and the like . . . or just the ones whose "scholars" are white, male, right-wing, disaffected, spectrum-inhabiting, antisocial gun nuts?

[not guilty]

The keyboard warriors' talk of a shooting civil war is nothing but blather. (Look at how the first one turned out.)

Who would raise, arm, train, command, supply and pay an insurrectionary force to oppose the United States armed forces?

[Frank Drackman]

No Permitt-ee, No Laund-ree!!!!!! Man, would have hated to be Wo or Lee in the SF Lock up, sitting next to murderers, rape-ists, and get asked what you’re “In for” “Operating Raunly Business Rithout Ricense!!!!” but the problem with Chinese Laundries, as soon as you wear your shirt it’s gotta be washed again,

Frank

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

“Operating Raunly Business Rithout Ricense!!!!”

The Volokh Conspiracy rules with respect to bigotry:

1. Right-wing bigotry is found at The Volokh Conspiracy solely on days ending with "y."

2. The Volokh Conspirators censor right-wing bigots at their white, male blog solely on days that do not end with "y."

[Gandydancer]

Making fun of an accent isn't "bigotry". It's just making fun of an accent. So pull your panties out of your crack.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What's your position on homophobic slurs and racial slurs?