May 10, 1886 – Supreme Court Decides Yick Wo v. Hopkins

In the landmark case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins (118 US 356, 1886), the Supreme Court unanimously struck down legislation designed to close Chinese-operated laundries in San Francisco. It was notable as the first case to employ the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment, prohibiting states from denying any person equal protection of the law.

Yick Wo was a laundry owned by Lee Yick, a Chinese immigrant. In 1880 San Francisco passed legislation requiring all laundries in wooden buildings to get approval of the Board of Supervisors for a license. Although workers of Chinese descent operated 89 percent of the city’s laundries, every single Chinese laundry owner applying was denied a permit. Moreover, both Lee Yick and Wo Lee (whose appeal was also considered as part of this case) were arrested for refusing to pay a fine for operating without the permit, and they were imprisoned by the city’s sheriff, Peter Hopkins. (C-Span’s reporting of the case relates that Sheriff Hopkins was responsible for arresting over 150 Chinese persons for not meeting the board of approval’s laundry regulations.)

Yick and Lee each sued for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing the fine and discriminatory enforcement of the ordinance violated their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case made its way to the US Supreme Court after losing in the Supreme Court of California and the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of California. Those courts determined that the law as neutral on its face, thus denying claims for Wo and Lee.

When the case reached the US Supreme Court, Justice T. Stanley Matthews, writing for a unanimous Court, ruled that despite the impartial wording of the law, its biased enforcement violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Justice T. Stanley Matthews, Associate Justice 1881-1889

According to the Court, even if a law is impartial on its face, “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 discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution.” The kind of biased enforcement experienced by the plaintiffs, the Court concluded, amounted to “a practical denial by the State of that equal protection of the law” and therefore violated the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It should also be noted that Matthews’ opinion added:

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.”