Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886)
Saturday, November 28, 2009 at 5:36PM Read the opinion here.
Issue. Can discriminatory administration of a facially neutral law be a violation of the Constitution under the Equal Protection Clause?
Background. San Francisco passed an ordinance that prohibited the operating of a laundry in a building that is not made of brick or stone unless the owner received the consent of the Board of Supervisors. The Board did grant permits to operate laundries in wooden structures to all but one non-Chinese applicants and denied permits to all 200 Chinese applicants.
A Chinese immigrant who operated a laundry for many years in a wooden structure was refused a permit and imprisoned for operating an illegal laundry. The immigrant sought a writ of baneas corpus and challenged his imprisonment as unjustified because of the discriminatory administration of the law. The Supreme Court agreed.
Court's Analysis. The Court notes:
Though the law itself be fair on its face and important in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discrimination between persons in similar circumstances, [the] denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution.
In this case, the proof of discrimination was simple, since it was admitted. Such discrimination is not allowed and violates the Equal Protection Clause.
Afterword. This case also expanded equal protection strict scrutiny analysis based on ethnicity.