KIM WOODS ONLY
nellamas
essay_4.pdf
Yick Wo v. Hopkins(1886)
In San Francisco in 1885, Yick Wo was convicted of constructing a wooden laundry without a license, which was prohibited in an 1880 municipal law. He had operated a legal laundry for 22 years prior to his arrest and when he applied for a license, the board of supervisors turned him down. California State Court supported the board's decision, even though there was evidence that the board had denied licenses to all Chinese laundry operators. The following is an excerpt from the Supreme Court's reversal of the state court's decision.
Justice Matthews delivered the opinion of the court.
...We are consequently constrained, at the outset, to differ from the Supreme Court of California upon the real meaning of the ordinances in question. That court considered these ordinances as vesting in the board of supervisors a not unusual discretion in granting or withholding their assent to the use of wooden building as laundries, to be exercised in reference to the circumstances of each case, with a view to the protection of the public against the dangers of fire. We are not able to concur in that interpretation of the power conferred upon the supervisors. There is nothing in the ordinances which points to such a regulation of the business of keeping and conducting laundries. They seem intended to confer, and actually do confer, not a discretion to be exercised upon a consideration of the circumstances of each case, but a naked and arbitrary power to give or withhold consent, not only as to places, but as to persons. So that, if an applicant for such consent, being in every way a competent and qualified person, and having complied with every reasonable condition demanded by any public interest, should, failing to obtain the requisite consent of the supervisors to the prosecution of his business, apply for redress by the judicial process of mandamus, to require the supervisors to consider and act upon his case, it would be a sufficient answer for them to say that the law had conferred upon them authority to withhold their assent, without reason and without responsibility. The power given to them is not confided to their discretion in the legal sense of that term, but is granted to their mere will. It is purely arbitrary, and acknowledges neither guidance nor restraint....
The ordinance drawn in question in the present case...does not prescribe a rule and conditions for the regulation of the use of property for laundry purposes, to which all similarly situated may conform...
The rights of the petitioners, as affected by the proceedings of which they complain, are not less, because they are aliens and subjects of the Emperor of China....
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: "Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality; and the equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws...
The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted, that no reason for it exists except hostility to the race and nationality to which the petitioners belong, and which in the eye of the law is not justified. The discrimination is, therefore, illegal, and the public administration which enforces it is a denial of the equal protection of the laws and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The imprisonment of the petitioners is, therefore, illegal, and they must be discharged.
Source: 118 U.S. 356 (1886).
Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/hss/SSA_SHARED_MEDIA_1/his...
1 of 2 4/11/17, 9:03 PM
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/hss/SSA_SHARED_MEDIA_1/his...
2 of 2 4/11/17, 9:03 PM
