The Supreme Court ruled that the Federal government lacked constitutional authority, mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment, to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations. The court ruling stated that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional. The decision was challenged by the Justice Harman as a narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the Court nevertheless with overwhelming majority ruled that neither the Thirteenth nor the Fourteenth Amendment granted the Federal state jurisdiction over these five cases. "This ruling," as argued by some scholars, "practically put an end to the federal government's attempt to enforce the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment" (Barnes and Connolly, 1999, p. 338).
In both cases, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the rights of individual states that narrowly defined the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Louisiana State protected a monopoly power to the detriment of individual workers. The Supreme Court could have ruled that the "privileges and immunities" clause empowered the Federal government to protect citizens from the infringement by state governments. "By declining to do so," as Ross (1998) argued,...
650). It may therefore be argued that the Slaughterhouses Cases reinforced the determination of racist government officials in the South who later challenged the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in the Supreme Court decision in 1883. The Civil Rights Cases were wrong on two grounds. Firstly, by narrowly defining the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, the cases violated the intended provisions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Secondly, even if the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional, it was morally right. The fact that in the antebellum America the Constitution guaranteed the right to own slaves did not morally legitimize the institution of slavery. Therefore, I think, the Civil Rights Cases, resolved by the Supreme Court in 1883, both violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the humanistic principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
References
Barnes, D.A., & Connolly, C. (1999) Repression, the Judicial System, and Political Opportunities for Civil Rights Advocacy during Reconstruction. The Sociological Quarterly, 40(2): 327-345. Retrieved on February 15, 2011, from
