Court Case Research Packet

COURT CASE RESEARCH PACKET CIVIL RIGHTS CASES, 1883: The Federal Government and Racial Discrimination. [SOURCE A] ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Background of the Case ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 sought to “recognize the equality of all men before the law,” regardless of race, color, or “previous condition of servitude.” The Act stated that all citizens should have equal access to inns, theaters, and other public venues. Although the venues were privately owned, Congress considered them to be public. Penalties were listed in Section 2 of the Act. A person who denied anyone access to an inn or a theater on the basis of race or color could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined or jailed. Someone who violated the law could also be forced to pay $500 to the person who had been discriminated against. In 1883, five cases were brought before the Supreme Court in a group. They were called the Civil Rights Cases. All five involved defendants who had refused African Americans access to public venues. Two of the defendants were charged with denying African Americans accommodations at an inn or hotel. A third defendant allegedly denied a seat in Maguire’s theatre in San Francisco to an African American, and the fourth defendant was charged with denying a person of unstated race access to the Grand Opera House in New York. The fifth case was Robinson & Wife v. Memphis & Charleston Railroad Company. Robinson sued on the grounds that his wife had been denied access to the ladies’ car on a train because of her race. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Constitutional Issue★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The question before the Court was whether the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was constitutional. No one disputed that African Americans had been denied access to public venues because of their race. The Supreme Court considered whether Congress had the authority to pass laws preventing such discrimination. The plaintiffs argued that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments gave Congress the power to prevent individual acts of discrimination. The defendants claimed that Congress had no such power. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Supreme Court’s Decision ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Court ruled with an 8 to 1 majority that the first and second sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were unconstitutional. The Court ruled that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not give Congress the right to legislate the actions of individuals. The Fourteenth Amendment granted Congress the power to prohibit states from passing laws denying citizens equal protection. However, Congress did not have the power to make its own law prohibiting discrimination and then prosecute individuals who violated that law. By doing so Congress violated the rights of both states and individual citizens. Justice Joseph P. Bradley wrote for the majority. “[The Civil Rights Act] steps into the domain of local jurisprudence, and lays down rules for the conduct of individuals in society towards each other…without referring in any manner to any supposed action of the State or its authorities,” Bradley stated. “Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject matter of the [Fourteenth] Amendment.” As a result of this decision, some states passed laws that segregated public venues by race. These were known as Jim Crow laws. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was one of the first cases to challenge Jim Crow laws. However, African Americans continued to endure legal segregation until the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Dissenting Opinion ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Justice John M. Harlan dissented. He believed the Civil Rights Act was in line with the spirit of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, which was to broaden individual rights. He stated that public venues “…are established and maintained under direct license of the law. The authority to establish and maintain them comes from the public.” He also stated that by enforcing the act, Congress did not unlawfully take power away from the states. Citation: “Civil Rights Cases.” Court Case Research Packet. Source A. Print. DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD, 1857: The Right to Freedom of Enslaved Persons. [SOURCE B] ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Background of the Case ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ John Emerson, a United States Army surgeon, took enslaved African Dred Scott to live at military posts in Illinois, a free state in 1834, and then to posts in the territory of Upper Louisiana (now Minnesota), where slavery had been forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. In 1838 Emerson and Scott returned to Missouri. In 1846 Scott won a suit for his freedom against Emerson’s widow in a Missouri court. Scott claimed that by having lived in free territory, he had earned his freedom. This ruling was overturned, however, by Missouri’s Supreme Court. Aided by various antislavery interests, Scott then started a new suit in a federal district court against Mrs. Emerson’s brother, John Sandford of New York, who had been acting as his sister’s agent. Since the case was a dispute between people who live in two different states, it could be heard in a federal court. When the federal court ruled that Scott was still a slave, he appealed to the United States Supreme Court. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★Constitutional Issues ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Constitution left questions such as the legal rights of slaves for later lawmakers to solve. In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which stated that a slave was property and which required escaped slaves to be returned to their holders. Opponents of the law unsuccessfully challenged its legality before the Supreme Court. The first major issue was whether Dred Scott—an African American—qualified as a citizen of the United States and was, therefore, entitled to sue in a federal court. The second issue concerned whether Scott had gained his freedom by moving to a free territory or state. The third issue focused on the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which banned slavery north of the southern boundary of Missouri (except for Missouri itself). Scott had lived in the non-slavery region. Did Congress have the power to prohibit slavery in the territories and to make the prohibition a condition of admission to the Union? ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Supreme Court’s Decision ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Court’s decision was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, although each justice wrote his own opinion, with only one justice concurring with Taney in every respect. Two justices dissented. Taney’s first ruling was that former Africans, “whether emancipated or not,” did not qualify as United States citizens. Taney held that only those who were state citizens when the Union was formed became federal citizens. Even though a state may emancipate a slave, give him the right to vote, and admit him to state citizenship, Taney said, none of these actions gave a slave automatic federal citizenship. The right to grant federal citizenship belonged exclusively to Congress. Taney concluded that Scott was not, and never had become, a citizen of the United States, and was not, therefore, entitled to sue in a federal court. Taney next examined the question of whether Scott had gained his freedom when he entered the Upper Louisiana Territory. The Chief Justice attacked the Missouri Compromise as an unconstitutional exercise of congressional authority. Congress cannot forbid a state or a territory from making slavery legal. Taney explained that as long as slavery is authorized by the Constitution, Congress cannot alter the right of a person to own slaves or any other kind of property. In viewing the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional, the Court determined that Scott’s status did not change when he entered free territory. The Court held that Scott had been a slave in Illinois and had returned to Missouri as a slave. On his return to Missouri, he became subject to Missouri law alone. Taney ordered the suit dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Dissenting Opinion ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Justice Benjamin R. Curtis dissented. Curtis noted that free African Americans were among those who had voted to ratify the Constitution in a number of states. Nothing in the Constitution stripped these free African Americans of their citizenship. Curtis maintained that “under the Constitution of the United States, every free person born on the soil of a State, who is a citizen of that State, who is a citizen of that State by force of its Constitution or laws, is also a citizen of the United States ....” The Court’s decision is one example of judicial power being exercised in favor of racial segregation. It is also the first time that a major federal law was ruled unconstitutional. Citation: “Dred Scott v. Sanford.” Court Case Research Packet. Source B. Print. PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 1896: Legality of Segregation by Race. [SOURCE C] ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Background of the Case ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ In 1890 Louisiana passed a law ordering railroads in the state to “provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” Violations of the law carried a fine of $25 or 20 days in jail. Railway personnel were responsible for assigning seats according to race. On June 7, 1892, Homer A. Plessy, who was one-eighth African American, decided to test the law’s validity by sitting in the white section of a train going from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana. When a conductor ordered Plessy to give up his seat, he refused. He was then arrested and imprisoned in a New Orleans jail. He was tried by a New Orleans court and found guilty of having violated the Louisiana law described above. He appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which found the law valid. Plessy then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, claiming his conviction and the Louisiana railroad law were unconstitutional because they violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★Constitutional Issue ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ In the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, although slavery had been abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, African Americans lived in a segregated society, especially in the South. The Fourteenth Amendment banned the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law.” Yet laws were passed in southern states that required segregated schools, theaters, parks, buses, and railroad trains. The Plessy case challenged the constitutionality of these so-called Jim Crow practices. Homer A. Plessy challenged the constitutionality of segregation laws in Louisiana. He based his appeal on the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibited the states from denying “the equal protection of the law” to any person. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Supreme Court’s Decision ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ A majority of the Court denied Plessy’s appeal and upheld the practice of segregation as required by the Louisiana law. Justice Henry Brown wrote the majority opinion. First, the ruling brushed aside the relevance to the case of the Thirteenth Amendment. Brown wrote that “a legal distinction between white and colored races . . . has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races.” The rest of the Court’s opinion, however, dealt with the applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown concluded that this amendment aimed strictly “to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law,” but that it “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality . Laws requiring segregation “do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other . . . .” The majority noted that this was the “underlying fallacy” of Plessy’s case. Just as valid under the Fourteenth Amendment would be a similar law enacted by an African American-controlled legislature with respect to whites or other races. The Court ruled, then, that the matter ultimately depended on whether Louisiana’s law was “reasonable.” Segregation laws “have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police powers.” In such matters, a legislature is free to take into account “established usages, customs, and traditions of the people,” as well as “the preservation of public peace and good order.” Finally, the Court rejected the notion that “social prejudices may be overcome by legislation.” Brown maintained, “If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane.” The Court, in effect, enunciated a doctrine that came to be called the separate-but-equal principle. If African Americans saw this as “a badge of inferiority,” it was solely “because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Dissenting Opinion ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Justice John Marshall Harlan entered a vigorous dissent from the majority’s decision. He “regretted that this high tribunal . . . has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their rights solely upon the basis of race.” He saw segregation on racial lines as “a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and equality before the law established by the Constitution . . . . The thin disguise of ‘equal’ accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.” Harlan saw the Constitution as “color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” The separate-but-equal principle was finally overturned in a series of civil rights decisions of the Court in the 1950s, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education. Citation: “Plessy v. Ferguson.” Court Case Research Packet. Source C. Print. POWELL v. ALABAMA, 1932: Denial of Right to Counsel. [SOURCE D] ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Background of the Case ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ On March 25, 1931, a fight took place between seven young African American and seven young white men. Ozie Powell and six friends—all African Americans—were on a freight train traveling through Alabama. Also on the train were seven white boys and two white women. In the fight all but one of the white boys were thrown off the train. A message was sent ahead reporting the fight, and the African Americans were asked to get off the train. The two women testified that each of them had been sexually assaulted by the African Americans. A sheriff’s posse seized the African Americans, and the women and the defendants were taken to the county seat in Scottsboro, Alabama. Angry crowds had gathered in Scottsboro after hearing about the alleged assaults. The sheriff called in the militia to protect the defendants as they were escorted to Gadsden for safekeeping and back to Scottsboro for a trial a few days later. All of the defendants were described as “youthful, ignorant, and illiterate.” They lived in other states and had no relatives or friends to help them in their situation. Powell and his friends were indicted six days later on March 31 for the rape of the two white women. Their trials began on April 6, 1931, in this hostile southern community. There were three trials, each lasting one day. Between the times of the arrest and trials, no attorney was named to represent any of the defendants. Not until the very morning of the trials was a lawyer named to represent them, but they had no time to confer with counsel. All the young men were given the death penalty. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions, but its chief justice wrote a dissent in which he maintained that the defendants had not received a fair trial. The United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. There were widespread protests, especially in liberal northern circles, against the trial court’s cursory handling of the cases. Many Americans viewed the trial as a sham aimed at finding the young men guilty as quickly as possible. Outraged people arranged for a northern attorney to become involved in the case, and some believe his participation was instrumental in having the decisions reversed. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★Constitutional Issue ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Although a number of issues were brought before the Supreme Court, the justices limited their examination to whether or not the defendants had been denied due process of the law because they had been denied the right to counsel. The question before the Court was whether the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in a capital case, paid for if necessary, by the state. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Supreme Court’s Decision ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Justice George Sutherland wrote the Court’s decision for the majority in a 7 to 2 ruling in favor of Powell. The decision overturned the conviction of the defendants and ordered a new trial to be held in which the defendants were to have the benefit of legal counsel. Sutherland stated, “Defendants were immediately hurried to trial.... [A] defendant charged with a serious crime, must not be stripped of his right to have sufficient time to advise with counsel and prepare his defense.” He stated that “in a capital case [one in which the death penalty is involved] where the defendant is unable to employ counsel, and is incapable adequately of making his own defense . . . it is the duty of the court, whether requested or not, to assign counsel for him as a necessary requisite of due process of law.” This ruling covered not only the trial itself but provided for “effective counsel” for the defendant in preparation for the trial. In making his decision, Justice Sutherland continued a process that had begun in previous cases that found certain rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights must be included in the Fourteenth Amendment’s description of due process of law. The hurdle over which all such reasoning by the Supreme Court had to pass was that the Fourteenth Amendment does not specifically mention any of these Bill of Rights protections. Quoting an earlier case, Justice Sutherland found that the right to counsel “is of such character that it cannot be denied without violating those ‘fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions’. . . .” Sutherland acknowledged that the legal system too often delayed the enforcement of criminal law and people suffered as a result. The opposite had occurred in this case, however. Sutherland spoke for the defendants in this case as he wrote, “. . . a defendant, charged with a serious crime, must not be stripped of his right to have sufficient time to advise with counsel and prepare his defense. To do that is not to proceed promptly in the calm spirit of regulated justice but to go forward with the haste of the mob.” Citation: “Powell v. Alabama.” Court Case Research Packet. Source D. Print. BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS, 1954: Nullifying the Separate but Equal Principle. [SOURCE E] ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Background of the Case ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Linda Brown, an African American teenager, applied for admission to an all-white public school in Topeka, Kansas. The board of education of Topeka refused to admit her. In a 1950 case, Sweatt v. Painter, the Supreme Court had for the first time questioned the constitutionality of the Plessy decision. The Court had held in that case that African Americans must be admitted to the previously segregated University of Texas Law School because no separate but equal facilities existed in Texas. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) now saw denying admission to Linda Brown and other young African Americans as an opportunity to challenge segregation in the public schools, even though the facilities in other segregated schools for African Americans were equal to those for white students. Brown represents a collection of four cases, all decided at one time. The cases had one common feature: African American children had been denied admission to segregated, allwhite public schools. The cases reached the United States Supreme Court by way of appeals through lower courts, all of which had ruled in accordance with the 1896 Plessy decision. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★Constitutional Issue ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Brown case called for an explicit reappraisal of the Plessy decision. Did separate but equal public facilities violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court had established the separate but equal principle, which allowed the continuation of segregated schools and public facilities. During the 56 years since the Plessy decision, however, Americans’ views on segregation had changed. To many people, the very idea of segregated schools as well as other segregated public facilities seemed to be out of step with the times. In the years after World War II, the NAACP and other civil rights groups began pressing for nullification of the separate but equal idea. The justices were not immune to the changing social forces in the United States. Still, if in fact they wished to overturn Plessy in the Brown case, they faced the challenge of finding a constitutional basis for their decision. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Supreme Court’s Decision ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ The Court ruled unanimously to overrule the separate but equal principle. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who wrote the decision, was keenly aware that in overruling Plessy, an act of enormous social and political consequences, it was important for the entire Court to be in agreement. The Brown ruling was thus issued by a unanimous Court. In his decision, Warren explained that since the relation of the Fourteenth Amendment to public schools was difficult to determine, the Court would “look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education.” The chief justice explained, “We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the law.” The Court concluded that segregation of African American schoolchildren “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” To bolster his claim about the huge psychological impact of segregation, Warren quoted the finding of a lower court, even though the lower court ruled against the African American children. That court had stated: “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has the tendency to [retard] the education and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.” Agreeing with this statement, Warren concluded, “Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.” On this basis the Court concluded “that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” In a follow-up to the Brown case, in 1955 the Court ordered that the integration of the public schools was to go forward “with all deliberate speed.” Citation: “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.” Court Case Research Packet. Source E. Print.