Civil Rights Cases
The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) were a series of important United States Supreme Court cases.
The decision was a ruling on five different cases from different courts on different reasoning. Read properly, the docket was:
- [On a Certificate of Division in Opinion between the Judges of the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Kansas.]
- [In Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of California.]
- [On a Certificate of Division in Opinion between the Judges of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Missouri.]
- United States v. Singleton
- [On a Certificate of Division in Opinion between the Judges of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.]
- Robinson and Wife v. Memphis & Charleston Railroad Company
- [In Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Tennessee.]
The Supreme Court declared most of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, a "last gasp" of the radical Republicans of the Reconstruction era, unconstitutional. In particular, the Court ruled that the 14th Amendment prohibited only government violations of civil rights, not the denial of civil rights by individuals unaided by the state. The attempt by Congress to legislate these private acts exceeded its power of enforcement under the Fourteenth Amendment. These cases essentially put a formal end to any attempts by Republicans to ensure the civil rights of blacks, and ushered in the mass denial of civil rights to blacks until the 1960s.
The decision that the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Acts were unconstitutional has not been overturned. Instead, more recent civil rights laws have been upheld based on the Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause in Article I.
