Civil Rights Cases

In the Civil Rights Cases decision of 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the powers of Congress with its finding that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not pertain to actions involving private parties. This case decided five similar discrimination cases that had been grouped together as the Civil Rights Cases when they were heard by the Supreme Court. These cases involved African Americans who had been denied access to whites-only facilities in railroads, hotels, and theaters. All five cases were related to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which the majority of justices declared unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases decision, which was delivered by Joseph P. Bradley. Nearly ninety years later, Congress would revive that legislation with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One of the most frequently examined decisions of the nineteenth century, the Civil Rights Cases decision dealt a dramatic blow to African Americans because it significantly narrowed the legal reach of the pivotal Fourteenth Amendment, which had provided for equal protection under the Constitution for African Americans.

John Marshall Harlan served thirty-three years, ten months, and four days on the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the longest tenures of all who have sat on the high bench. During that period, he wrote his share of opinions for the Court majority, yet he is best remembered for his dissents—for their passion, for their prescience, and for the sheer fact that the most significant among them, those concerning civil rights, were written by a southerner and former slaveholder. Harlan’s passion for the Constitution led him to fight for the Union during the Civil War; it may also have accounted for his expansive reading of the Civil War Amendments, particularly the Fourteenth Amendment.

Harlan had the foresight to maintain in his dissenting opinion in the Civil Rights Cases that the “colored race” was entitled to the same right in public accommodations as any other member of the public, but in 1883 what most impressed his audience was the former slaveholder’s willingness to stand alone as the voice of conscience, delivering his opinion with fervor and directness.