Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883)

In five separate cases, African-Americans sued places of public accommodation such as hotels, theaters, and railroads for refusing them admittance or refusing them entry to areas designated as white-only. The consolidated matters were U.S. v. Stanley, U.S. v. Ryan, U.S. v. Nichols, U.S. v. Singleton, and Robinson v. Memphis & Charleston Railroad.

Majority

• Joseph P. Bradley (Author)
• Morrison Remick Waite
• Samuel Freeman Miller
• Stephen Johnson Field
• William Burnham Woods
• Stanley Matthews
• Horace Gray
• Samuel M. Blatchford

Drawing a distinction between state and private action, Bradley ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not permit the federal government to prohibit discriminatory behavior by private parties. His decision was based on a strict textual reading of the document. He found that Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment grants Congress the power to enforce the Amendment's provisions only against the states. Addressing a challenge to the private discriminatory actions under the Thirteenth Amendment, which bars involuntary servitude, Bradley argued that this is restricted to prohibiting the ownership of slaves, rather than other forms of discriminatory conduct.

Dissent

• John Marshall Harlan (Author)

Advocating for a broader understanding of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, Harlan pointed to the public function that these places of accommodation serve. He tried to blur the line between state and private action, such as by linking private railroads to the government function of facilitating travel. Harlan felt that restrictions on the right to travel would violate the Thirteenth Amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude, and he suggested that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment might be implicated as well.

This is one of the earliest articulations of the state action doctrine that limits the Fourteenth Amendment. If an action is taken by a private party, it cannot be attacked on constitutional grounds because the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to the government. As later cases reveal, however, there are exceptions and extenuating circumstances in which an action that is ostensibly by a private party can be considered state action because of the government's degree of involvement or the private party's assumption of government functions in a certain setting.

On a broader level, this decision set the stage for over half a century of discrimination and segregation, which would not end until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.