Civil Rights Cases

Majority — Bradley

Joined by: Waite, Miller, Field, Blatchford, Gray, Matthews, Woods

The majority reasoned that the Fourteenth Amendment's text prohibits only "State action" — meaning laws or actions taken by state governments — and does not reach purely private conduct. Congress's enforcement power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment is therefore only "corrective," allowing it to counteract specific state laws or state actions that violate the amendment, not to create a general federal code of conduct governing private individuals. Because the 1875 Act punished private discrimination without reference to any state law or state action causing it, the Court found it exceeded Congress's power. On the Thirteenth Amendment, the majority reasoned that while Congress can pass direct legislation to eliminate slavery and its "badges and incidents," a private innkeeper or theater owner refusing service to a Black customer does not impose any form of slavery or servitude, so this amendment likewise does not authorize the law. The majority added that at some point formerly enslaved people must "take the rank of a mere citizen" and rely on ordinary legal protections like anyone else.

Dissent reasoning

Justice Harlan argued that the majority's reasoning was too narrow and technical, defeating the purpose the amendments were meant to achieve. He contended that railroads, inns, and theaters operate under public licenses and perform quasi-public functions, making their discriminatory acts effectively actions taken under color of public authority rather than purely private conduct. Harlan argued the Fourteenth Amendment's grant of citizenship was itself an affirmative grant of rights, not merely a prohibition on states, and that Congress's power to "enforce" the amendment includes direct legislation protecting rights derived from national citizenship, not just corrective measures against specific state laws. He further argued that racial discrimination in public accommodations is a "badge of servitude" traceable to slavery, which the Thirteenth Amendment's direct, primary enforcement power was intended to eliminate. Harlan concluded that the Court's interpretation, following the precedent of upholding sweeping direct federal legislation to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts protecting slaveholders' rights, unjustifiably refused similar direct legislative protection for the newly established rights of freedom and citizenship.