Places & Faces | Black History Month If it Pleases the Court . . . Supreme Court decisions that have affected civil rights

by Madelaine Brauner Landry

On the front of the United States Supreme Court building, the inscription of “Equal Justice Under Law” promises justice to all “in theory.” Those words have often failed to hold true in practice. Over the centuries, the law of our land has swayed, reflecting the attitudes of society, as well as of the justices who’ve resided over the highest court in the land. In Civil Rights history, countless landmark cases have resulted in an evolution of thought, as well as in the establishment of groundbreaking changes.

During Black History Month, a brief overview of three paired landmark cases is presented here to highlight how the court has changed in approach to some specific civil rights issues.

The Civil Rights Case (1883) and Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964)

In 1883, there were a group of five landmark cases in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution failed to empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals. During Reconstruction, Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which entitled everyone to access accommodation, public transport, and theaters, regardless of race or color. However, in a majority opinion, Associate Justice Joseph P. Bradley struck the act down, maintaining that the 13th Amendment merely abolished slavery, and along with the 14th Amendment, did not allow Congress to outlaw private acts of racial discrimination.

Justice John Marshall Harlan alone dissented, criticizing the Court’s extremely narrow interpretation of the amendments. “The opinion in these cases proceeds, as it seems to me, upon grounds entirely too narrow and artificial. The substance and spirit of the recent amendments of the constitution have been sacrificed by a subtle and ingenious verbal criticism.”

Nearly a century later, Congress approved the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which banned racial discrimination in public places. The Heart of Atlanta Motel, which had opened in 1956, had refused to rent rooms to African-American patrons. They took their case to court. As the petitioner, they lost when the high court used their decision to finally issue a permanent injunction requiring the motel to refrain from using any forms of racial discrimination. This historic case has since been subsequently cited almost 700 times in other court decisions.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

This famous. “separate but equal” case from 1896 ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution, as long as the facilities were considered to be equal in quality. Following Reconstruction, that decision only served to legitimize many state laws, like those in Louisiana, that had re-established overt racial discrimination in many places. Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race, had attempted to board a “whites only” car on a New Orleans train in the late 19th century. Following his arrest, his lawyers argued that Louisiana law implied that black people were inferior. The “blacks only” car, where Plessy was ordered to sit, was indeed separate, but hardly equal. Following all appeals, the high court held against Plessy. Once again, Justice Harlan, the lone dissenter, argued that the U.S. Constitution has never been explicitly overruled. However, in 1954, the decision in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka finally established that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, even if the segregated facilities were deemed otherwise “equal” in quality.

Loving v. Virginia (1967) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

This 1967 landmark decision ruled that laws banning interracial marriage directly violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Mildred Loving, a “woman of color,” and her white husband Richard, had been sentenced to a year of imprisonment for marrying one another. The charges stemmed from the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 in Virginia, which criminalized marriage between “whites and coloreds.” In their 1967 appeal to the Supreme Court, the high decision was later cited in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, resulting in a guarantee that gender-based marriage restrictions would also be considered unconstitutional. The fundamental right to marriage by same-sex couples was established in a 5-4 ruling that now requires all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories to perform and recognize these marriages, with all the accompanying rights and responsibilities.

These are only brief thumbnail sketches of six paired civil rights decisions in the high court’s long and contentious history. The term “civil rights” has generally been attached to various cases, but there remains no single inclusive definition. However, it is commonly accepted that civil rights cases are those that challenge some form of discrimination against a group of people that has been historically oppressed or politically disempowered.