Yick Wo v. Hopkins

118 U.S. 356 (1886), argued 14 Apr. 1886, decided 10 May 1886 by vote of 9 to 0; Matthews for the Court. During the summer of 1885, many Chinese in San Francisco, including Yick Wo, violated a municipal laundry ordinance to test its validity. This local law allowed only the city's board of supervisors to approve laundry operating licenses. Failure to secure a license and continuing to do business could result in a misdemeanor conviction, a thousand‐dollar fine, and a jail term of up to six months. The ordinance did not apply to laundries located in brick buildings.

This ordinance was clearly aimed at Chinese businesses because Chinese laundries were invariably located in wooden buildings. The law followed several other attempts by San Francisco to discourage Chinese settlement. In 1870, the Cubic Air Ordinance restricted the number of occupants in Chinese apartment buildings based upon certain space requirements. The Queue Ordinance of 1876 stipulated that all Chinese prisoners had to have their hair cut, and the No Special Police for Chinese Quarter Ordinance of 1878 denied Chinatown police protection. In addition, Chinese laundries had to pay a special fee if they used horse‐drawn delivery vehicles.

The laundry ordinance was also drafted with white Californians' concern about the Chinese presence in mind. From 1820 up to 1882, the year the first Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress, open immigration brought many Chinese to California. In 1880, approximately 75,000 Chinese lived in California, amounting to 10 percent of that state's population. Nearly half of California's Chinese were concentrated in the San Francisco area.

According to an 1881–1882 labor census taken in San Francisco, Chinese were primarily employed in four businesses: making cigars, shoes, and clothes, and operating laundries. Most laundries in San Francisco were owned by Chinese. Yick Wo had lived in California since 1861 and had been in the laundry business for twenty‐two years. His laundry had been inspected by local authorities as late as 1884 and found safe. But in 1885 the board of supervisors denied him and two hundred other Chinese laundry owners their licenses. Only one Chinese laundry owner was given a license, and she had probably not been identified as Chinese. The board was obviously seeking to wipe out the Chinese laundry business.

After Yick Wo was denied his license, he continued to operate, and was arrested. In police court Yick Wo was found guilty, and fined ten dollars. He refused to pay and was ordered to jail for ten days. Yick Wo then petitioned the California supreme court for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition was denied, and he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, naming the sheriff, a man named Hopkins, in the suit.

Yick Wo claimed that the ordinance abrogated his Fourteenth Amendment rights because of the blatant discriminatory results of its implementation. He presented statistical evidence showing the discrimination to San Francisco's Chinese community. Only 25 percent of San Francisco laundries could operate under the board of supervisors' licensing requirements, seventy‐nine of them owned by non‐Chinese and only one owned by a Chinese. His attorneys also contended that the ordinance violated China's 1880 treaty with the United States. San Francisco argued that the Fourteenth Amendment could not infringe upon the police power granted to cities and states.

In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court found for Yick Wo and directed his discharge. Justice Stanley Matthews wrote that the ordinances as enforced conferred an authority broader than the traditional police power to regulate the use of property. This power was discriminatory and constituted class legislation prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. Matthews held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all persons, citizens and aliens alike. For Matthews, legitimate police power had to regulate safety and health practices with specificity, and the power had to be applied in good faith. Such was not the circumstance for the Chinese in San Francisco.

The Court had clearly expanded the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. State police power had been limited and the Due Process Clause was now available to apply to local governmental discriminatory actions. Although the Yick Wo decision was potentially sweeping, it did not achieve instant recognition. After 1886 the Supreme Court's composition changed, and the Court did not build upon this precedent until the mid‐twentieth century.

See also Alienage and Naturalization; Due Process, Substantive; Equal Protection; Race and Racism.

Bibliography

• William L. Tang, The Legal Status of the Chinese in America, in The Chinese in America, edited by Paul K. T. Sih and Leonard B. Allen (1976), pp. 3–15.
• Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth Century America (1994)

— John R. Wunder

An 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S. Ct. 1064, 30 L. Ed. 220 (1886), held that the unequal application of a law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Consti- tution.\

A law that is racially neutral on its face may be deliberately administered in a discriminatory way, or it may have been enacted in order to disadvantage a racial minority. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the Supreme Court stated for the first time that a state or municipal law that appears to be fair on its face will be declared unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment because of its discriminatory purpose.

Yick Wo, a native and subject of China, was convicted and imprisoned for violating an ordinance of the city of San Francisco, California, which made it unlawful to maintain a laundry "without having first obtained the consent of the board of supervisors, except the same be located in a building constructed either of brick or stone." The 1880 ordinance was neutral on its face, but its purpose and its administration appeared suspect to Yick Wo and other Chinese. Most laundries in San Francisco were owned by Chinese and were constructed out of wood. The few laundries owned by whites were located in brick buildings. At the time the ordinance was passed, Chinese immigration had brought around 75,000 Chinese to California, half of whom lived in San Francisco. The white population became increasingly anti-Chinese and sought ways to control the Chinese population.

In 1885 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors denied Yick Wo and two hundred other Chinese laundry owners their licenses, even though their establishments had previously passed city inspections. After he was denied his license, Yick Wo continued to operate his business. He was eventually arrested and jailed for ten days for violating the ordinance. More than one hundred and fifty other Chinese laundry owners were also arrested for violating the ordinance.

On appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Yick Wo argued that the ordinance violated the Fourteenth Amendment, as the law denied him equal protection of the laws. He pointed out that only one-quarter of the laundries could operate under the ordinance, with 73 owned by non-Chinese and only one owned by a Chinese. San Francisco contended the ordinance was a valid exercise of the police powers granted by the U.S. Constitution to cities and states.

Justice Stanley Matthews, writing for a unanimous court, struck down the ordinance. Matthews looked past the neutral language to strike down the ordinance as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. He found that the division between wood and brick buildings was an "arbitrary line." Moreover, whatever the intent of the law may have been, the administration of the ordinance was carried out "with a mind so unequal and oppressive as to amount to a practical denial by the state" of equal protection of the laws.

Matthews held that:

Though the law itself be fair on its face, and impartial in appliance, 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 discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the constitution.

Because the unequal application of the ordinance furthered "unjust and illegal discrimination," the Court ruled that the ordinance was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Yick Wo has become a central part of civil rights jurisprudence. If a law has a discriminatory purpose or is administered unequally, courts will apply the Fourteenth Amendment and strike down the law. Yick Wo is also the source of modern civil rights disparate-impact cases, in which discrimination is established by statistical inequality rather than through proof of intentional discrimination.

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Yick Wo v. Hopkins Wo Lee v. Hopkins
Supreme Court of the United States
Submitted April 14, 1886 Decided May 10, 1886
Full case name	Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Sheriff
Citations	118 U.S. 356 (more) 6 S. Ct. 1064; 30 L. Ed. 220; 1886 U.S. LEXIS 1938
Prior history	In re Yick Wo, writ of habeas corpus denied, 9 P. 139 (Cal. 1885); In re Wo Lee, writ of habeas corpus denied, 26 F. 471 (D. Cal. 1886)
Holding
Racially discriminatory application of a facially neutral statute violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Supreme Court of California and Circuit Court for the District of California reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice Morrison Waite Associate Justices Samuel F. Miller · Stephen J. Field Joseph P. Bradley · John M. Harlan William B. Woods · T. Stanley Matthews Horace Gray · Samuel Blatchford
Case opinions
Majority	Matthews, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886)^[1], was the first case where the United States Supreme Court ruled that a law that is race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Contents 1 Facts 2 Issue before the Court 3 Opinion of the Court 4 Miscellaneous 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Facts

In the 1880s, Chinese immigrants to California faced many legal and economic hurdles, including discriminatory provisions in the California Constitution. As a result, they were excluded, either by law or by bias, from many professions. Many turned to the laundry business and in San Francisco about 89% of the laundry workers were of Chinese descent.

In 1880, the city of San Francisco passed an ordinance that persons could not operate a laundry in a wooden building without a permit from the Board of Supervisors. The ordinance conferred upon the Board of Supervisors the discretion to grant or withhold the permits. At the time, about 95% of the city's 320 laundries were operated in wooden buildings. Approximately two-thirds of those laundries were owned by Chinese persons. Although most of the city's wooden building laundry owners applied for a permit, none were granted to any Chinese owner, while only one out of approximately eighty non-Chinese applicants was denied a permit.

Yick Wo (Americanization: Lee Yick), who had lived in California and had operated a laundry in the same wooden building for many years and held a valid license to operate his laundry issued by the Board of Fire-Wardens, continued to operate his laundry and was convicted and fined $10.00 for violating the ordinance. He sued for a writ of habeas corpus after he was imprisoned in default for having refused to pay the fine.

Issue before the Court

The state argued that the ordinance was strictly one out of concern for safety, as laundries of the day often needed very hot stoves to boil water for laundry, and indeed laundry fires were not unknown and often resulted in the destruction of adjoining buildings as well.

However, the petitioner pointed out that prior to the new ordinance, the inspection and approval of laundries in wooden buildings had been left up to fire wardens. Yick Wo's laundry had never failed an inspection for fire safety. Moreover, the application of the prior law focused only on laundries in crowded areas of the city, while the new law was being enforced on isolated wooden buildings as well. The law also ignored other wooden buildings where fires were common—even cooking stoves posed the same risk as those used for laundries.

Opinion of the Court

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The Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Matthews, noted that it was clear that the administration of the law was discriminatory and that there was therefore no need to even consider whether the ordinance itself was lawful. Even though the Chinese laundry owners were usually not American citizens, the court ruled they were still entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. He also noted that the court had previously ruled that it was acceptable to hold administrators of the law liable when they abused their authority. He denounced the law as a blatant attempt to exclude Chinese from the laundry trade in San Francisco, and the court struck down the law, ordering dismissal of all charges against other laundry owners who had been jailed.

Yick Wo had little application shortly after the decision. In fact, it was not long after that the Court developed the "separate but equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), in practice allowing discriminatory treatment of African Americans. Yick Wo was never applied at the time to Jim Crow laws which, although also racially neutral, were in practice discriminatory against blacks. However, by the 1950s, the Warren Court used the principle established in Yick Wo to strike down several attempts by states and municipalities in the deep south to limit the political rights of blacks. Yick Wo has been cited in well over 150 Supreme Court cases since it was decided.

Yick Wo is cited in Hirabayashi v. United States (320 US 81, 1943) to recognize that "Distinctions between citizens solely based because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. For that reason, legislative classification or discrimination based on race alone has often been held to be a denial of equal protection." However, the US Supreme Court upholds the conviction of Gordon Hirabayashi, the Japanese American who tests the curfew law and refuses to register for the forced internment of people of Japanese descent during WWII.

Miscellaneous

In San Francisco there is a public school named Yick Wo Alternative Elementary School in honor of Yick Wo.

See also

• Chinese American
• Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 118

References

1. ^ Text of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886) is available from:  · Enfacto · Findlaw

External links

• Background [1]
• Chin, Gabriel J. (2007), Unexplainable on Grounds of Race: Doubts About Yick Wo, Arizona Legal Studies Working Paper No. 30-07.
• Case Brief for Yick Wo v. Hopkins at Lawnix.com

v • d • e Chinese American Topics Related groups Chinese American · American-born Chinese · Taiwanese American · Asian American · Hyphenated American History Chinese American history · Chinese immigration to Hawaii · Chinese immigration to Puerto Rico — Related legislation: Anti-Chinese legislation · Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 · Chinese Exclusion Act · Geary Act · Immigration Act of 1924 · Cable Act · Magnuson Act · INS Act of 1965 — Events: Chinese massacre of 1871 · Tape v. Hurley (1884) · Issaquah riot of 1885 · Rock Springs massacre (1885) · Tacoma riot of 1885 (1885) · Seattle riot of 1886 · Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) · Chinese Massacre Cove (1887) · United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) · Death of Vincent Chin (1982) Chinatowns List of Chinatowns in the United States · Chinatowns in North America · Chinatown patterns in North America · Boston · Chicago · Houston · Las Vegas · Los Angeles · Manhattan · Oakland · Philadelphia · San Francisco · Washington, D.C. — Transport: Chinatown bus lines Culture Food: American Chinese cuisine — Film: Joy Luck Club · Chan Is Missing — Terminology: Chinaman's chance · Jook-sing — Events: Love boat Museums Museum of Chinese in America · Chinese American Museum · Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum · Wo Hing Museum Organizations List of Chinese American Associations · Chinese American Citizens Alliance · Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association · Chinese Historical Society of Southern California · Chinese Society Halls on Maui · Ying On Association · Chinese Staff and Workers' Association · Chinese for Affirmative Action · Committee of 100 · Organization of Chinese Americans · Bing Kong Tong · Hip Sing Association Banks Cathay Bank · United International Bank · Chinese American Bank · Global Commerce Bank · East West Bank · Others Lists List of Chinese Americans · List of U.S. cities with large Chinese American populations

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