Plaintiff
United States
Defendant
R. G. Harris, et al.
Plaintiff's Claim
A federal civil rights statute making it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to deprive another person of the equal protection of the laws or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws is constitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Plaintiff
Samuel F. Phillips, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Defense Lawyer
None
Justices for the Court
Samuel Blatchford, Joseph P. Bradley, Stephen Johnson Field, Horace Gray, John Marshall Harlan I, Stanley Matthews, Samuel Freeman Miller, Morrison RemickWaite, William Burnham Woods (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
22 January 1883
Decision
That the federal statute was unconstitutional. Therefore, the criminal indictment against the defendants was dismissed.
Significance
The ruling invalidated a provision of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, that made it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to deprive another person of the equal protection of the lawsor of equal privileges or immunities under the laws. The Supreme Court invalidated the provision because the U.S. Constitution did not authorize Congressto punish private persons for interfering with the exercise of Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Constitution only gave Congress power to regulate state action. The Court's decision gave rise to what is commonly called the "state action" doctrine in civil rights cases.
On 1 January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation of emancipation for African Americans held in slavery in Confederate states. Between 1865 and 1870, the states ratified to the U.S. Constitution the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment which guaranteed equal protection of the laws, and the Fifteenth Amendment which guaranteed the right to vote. In the late 1860s, a secret white organization called the Ku Klux Klan was founded with the purpose of preventing African Americans from gaining equal access to political power. The Ku Klux Klan beat and murdered African Americans and their white sympathizers to keep them from exercising theirrights.
To counter the activities of the organization, the Reconstruction Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. The act extended the protection of federal courts to those who effectively were prevented from exercising their civil rights by the threat of mob violence. Theact authorized both criminal and civil actions against those who "conspire or go in disguise upon the highway or on the premises of another for the purpose of depriving" any person of the equal protection of the laws or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws. Although the immediate purpose of theact was to combat animosity against African Americans and their supporters,the language of the act, like that of many Reconstruction statutes, was applicable to incidents beyond the scope of events during the Reconstruction.
In 1876, a grand jury returned an indictment in a federal circuit court in Tennessee charging several persons with criminal violations of the Civil RightsAct following the beating of three African American men and the killing of afourth, all of whom were, at the time of the incident, under arrest and in the custody of a deputy sheriff. The defendants were charged with conspiring to deprive the victims of the equal protection of the laws and of the right tobe protected from violence while under arrest and in custody of the sheriff.The defendants were also charged with conspiring to prevent or hinder the deputy sheriff from keeping the arrested men safe and from providing them the equal protection of the law.
The defendants demurred to the indictment, challenging its validity and seeking its dismissal. The defendants questioned the power of Congress to pass thelaw on which the indictment was based. Specifically, the defendants claimedthat only the states, not the federal government, had the power to enact andenforce legislation prohibiting conspiracies to deprive persons of equal protection of the laws when the conspiracies did not involve state action.
The demurrer was heard in the federal circuit court by a panel of two judges.After oral argument, the circuit court was divided in its opinion on the constitutionality of the act's criminal provisions. Consequently, the circuit court certified the question to the U.S. Supreme Court, pursuant to a federal statute authorizing reconciliation of the division of opinion.
Congress Lacked Power to Pass Law
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the provision punishingprivate conspiracies was unconstitutional. The Court began by stating the rules applicable to its analysis. First, the Court had to presume that Congresshad constitutional power to pass the statute unless the lack of constitutional authority was clearly demonstrated. Next, the Court stated, "every valid act of Congress must find in the Constitution some warrant for its passage." To summarize the analytical process, the Court quoted Justice Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution saying, "Whenever, therefore, a question arises concerning the constitutionality of a particular power, the first question is whether the power be expressed in the Constitution. If it be, thequestion is decided. If it be not expressed, the next inquiry must be whetherit is properly an incident to an express power and necessary to its execution. If it be, then it may be exercised by Congress. If not, Congress cannot exercise it."
Searching the Constitution, the Court found only four paragraphs that could have any reference to the question at hand. Those paragraphs were Section 2 ofArticle 4 of the original Constitution and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. The Court considered each of these constitutional provisions, in turn, to determine if any of them gave Congress the power to enact the Civil Rights Act provisions criminalizing private conspiracies.
The Court first concluded that the Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote, did not give Congress that power. The Civil Rights Act criminalized the conduct of private persons who invaded the equal privileges or immunities of others or deprived others of equal protection of the law. It made no reference to conduct of the state or the United States or to voting rights. According to the Court, such a law could not be founded on the Fifteenth Amendment, the sole object of which was to prevent the United States or the states from denying or abridging voting rights based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The Court also found no support for the act's criminal provisions in the Fourteenth Amendment, again because the provisions were directed at the actions of private persons, without reference to the laws of the states, or the administration of those laws by state officials. The Fourteenth Amendment, in the Court's opinion, prohibited states, not private persons, from making or enforcing any law abridging the privileges or immunities of U.S. citizens, depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process, or denying anyperson equal protection of the laws. The Court concluded that the FourteenthAmendment, like the Fifteenth, could not be read to authorize the federal government to regulate private conduct.
Elaborating on its position, the Supreme Court quoted Justice Bradley in United States v. Cruikshank, stating that the Fourteenth Amendment "is a guaranty against the exertion of arbitrary and tyrannical power on the part ofthe government and legislature of the state, not a guaranty against the commission of individual offenses; and the power of congress, whether express orimplied, to legislate for the enforcement of such a guaranty, does not extendto the passage of laws for the suppression of crime within the states." To emphasize its point, the Court said, "When the state has been guilty of no violation of [the amendment's] provisions, . . . when, on the contrary, the lawsof the state, as enacted by its legislative, and construed by its judicial,and administered by its executive departments, recognize and protect the rights of all persons, (then) the amendment imposes no duty and confers no powerupon Congress." The Court held that because the Civil Rights Act applied no matter how well the state may have performed its duty, the act could find no warrant in the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, alsodid not warrant the enactment of the criminal provisions of the act. Althoughthe amendment gave Congress the power to enact enforcing legislation, the Court determined that the civil rights provisions under review were broader than what the Thirteenth Amendment would justify. According to the Court, the provisions could apply even to a conspiracy between two free white men againstanother free white man to deprive the latter of a right accorded him by the laws of the state or of the United States. The Court concluded by saying, sucha law "clearly cannot be authorized by the amendment which simply prohibitsslavery and involuntary servitude."
The final constitutional provision considered by the Court was Article 4, Section 2, declaring that the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states. The object ofthis provision is to inhibit a state from passing legislation discriminatingagainst citizens of other states. The Court concluded that the criminal provisions of the Civil Rights Act could not find support in this article, again because the article was directed against state action, rather than the actionsof private citizens who invade the rights of fellow citizens.
Impact
The Court's ruling that Congress did not have the power under the Constitution to regulate private conduct came during the aftermath of the Civil War whenre-establishing political harmony with Southern states was crucial. The decision reflected the federal government's concern that the Fourteenth Amendmentnot be used to centralize power so as to upset the federal system. This restrictive view of Congress' power rendered ineffective much of the civil rightslegislation passed during Reconstruction. This view prevailed until 1966 when six Supreme Court justices expressly stated in United States v. Guest (1966), that the specific language of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendmentempowers Congress to enact laws punishing all conspiracies--with or withoutstate action--that interfere with Fourteenth Amendment rights. In Guest, the Court was interpreting a statute passed in 1909 criminalizing precisely the same conduct covered by the 1871 act. Four years later, in Adickes v. Kress (1970), the Supreme Court finally declared that Harris hadbeen overruled.
Although the Harris decision invalidated only the criminal provision of the 1871 act, state action also became an issue in civil damages actions. More than a century after their passage, the Civil Rights Acts of the Reconstruction Era continued to be used to assert a variety of civil constitutional claims and continued to present difficult questions of statutory interpretation.
Related Cases
United States
Defendant
R. G. Harris, et al.
Plaintiff's Claim
A federal civil rights statute making it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to deprive another person of the equal protection of the laws or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws is constitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Plaintiff
Samuel F. Phillips, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Defense Lawyer
None
Justices for the Court
Samuel Blatchford, Joseph P. Bradley, Stephen Johnson Field, Horace Gray, John Marshall Harlan I, Stanley Matthews, Samuel Freeman Miller, Morrison RemickWaite, William Burnham Woods (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
22 January 1883
Decision
That the federal statute was unconstitutional. Therefore, the criminal indictment against the defendants was dismissed.
Significance
The ruling invalidated a provision of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, that made it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to deprive another person of the equal protection of the lawsor of equal privileges or immunities under the laws. The Supreme Court invalidated the provision because the U.S. Constitution did not authorize Congressto punish private persons for interfering with the exercise of Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Constitution only gave Congress power to regulate state action. The Court's decision gave rise to what is commonly called the "state action" doctrine in civil rights cases.
On 1 January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation of emancipation for African Americans held in slavery in Confederate states. Between 1865 and 1870, the states ratified to the U.S. Constitution the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment which guaranteed equal protection of the laws, and the Fifteenth Amendment which guaranteed the right to vote. In the late 1860s, a secret white organization called the Ku Klux Klan was founded with the purpose of preventing African Americans from gaining equal access to political power. The Ku Klux Klan beat and murdered African Americans and their white sympathizers to keep them from exercising theirrights.
To counter the activities of the organization, the Reconstruction Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. The act extended the protection of federal courts to those who effectively were prevented from exercising their civil rights by the threat of mob violence. Theact authorized both criminal and civil actions against those who "conspire or go in disguise upon the highway or on the premises of another for the purpose of depriving" any person of the equal protection of the laws or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws. Although the immediate purpose of theact was to combat animosity against African Americans and their supporters,the language of the act, like that of many Reconstruction statutes, was applicable to incidents beyond the scope of events during the Reconstruction.
In 1876, a grand jury returned an indictment in a federal circuit court in Tennessee charging several persons with criminal violations of the Civil RightsAct following the beating of three African American men and the killing of afourth, all of whom were, at the time of the incident, under arrest and in the custody of a deputy sheriff. The defendants were charged with conspiring to deprive the victims of the equal protection of the laws and of the right tobe protected from violence while under arrest and in custody of the sheriff.The defendants were also charged with conspiring to prevent or hinder the deputy sheriff from keeping the arrested men safe and from providing them the equal protection of the law.
The defendants demurred to the indictment, challenging its validity and seeking its dismissal. The defendants questioned the power of Congress to pass thelaw on which the indictment was based. Specifically, the defendants claimedthat only the states, not the federal government, had the power to enact andenforce legislation prohibiting conspiracies to deprive persons of equal protection of the laws when the conspiracies did not involve state action.
The demurrer was heard in the federal circuit court by a panel of two judges.After oral argument, the circuit court was divided in its opinion on the constitutionality of the act's criminal provisions. Consequently, the circuit court certified the question to the U.S. Supreme Court, pursuant to a federal statute authorizing reconciliation of the division of opinion.
Congress Lacked Power to Pass Law
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the provision punishingprivate conspiracies was unconstitutional. The Court began by stating the rules applicable to its analysis. First, the Court had to presume that Congresshad constitutional power to pass the statute unless the lack of constitutional authority was clearly demonstrated. Next, the Court stated, "every valid act of Congress must find in the Constitution some warrant for its passage." To summarize the analytical process, the Court quoted Justice Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution saying, "Whenever, therefore, a question arises concerning the constitutionality of a particular power, the first question is whether the power be expressed in the Constitution. If it be, thequestion is decided. If it be not expressed, the next inquiry must be whetherit is properly an incident to an express power and necessary to its execution. If it be, then it may be exercised by Congress. If not, Congress cannot exercise it."
Searching the Constitution, the Court found only four paragraphs that could have any reference to the question at hand. Those paragraphs were Section 2 ofArticle 4 of the original Constitution and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. The Court considered each of these constitutional provisions, in turn, to determine if any of them gave Congress the power to enact the Civil Rights Act provisions criminalizing private conspiracies.
The Court first concluded that the Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote, did not give Congress that power. The Civil Rights Act criminalized the conduct of private persons who invaded the equal privileges or immunities of others or deprived others of equal protection of the law. It made no reference to conduct of the state or the United States or to voting rights. According to the Court, such a law could not be founded on the Fifteenth Amendment, the sole object of which was to prevent the United States or the states from denying or abridging voting rights based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The Court also found no support for the act's criminal provisions in the Fourteenth Amendment, again because the provisions were directed at the actions of private persons, without reference to the laws of the states, or the administration of those laws by state officials. The Fourteenth Amendment, in the Court's opinion, prohibited states, not private persons, from making or enforcing any law abridging the privileges or immunities of U.S. citizens, depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process, or denying anyperson equal protection of the laws. The Court concluded that the FourteenthAmendment, like the Fifteenth, could not be read to authorize the federal government to regulate private conduct.
Elaborating on its position, the Supreme Court quoted Justice Bradley in United States v. Cruikshank, stating that the Fourteenth Amendment "is a guaranty against the exertion of arbitrary and tyrannical power on the part ofthe government and legislature of the state, not a guaranty against the commission of individual offenses; and the power of congress, whether express orimplied, to legislate for the enforcement of such a guaranty, does not extendto the passage of laws for the suppression of crime within the states." To emphasize its point, the Court said, "When the state has been guilty of no violation of [the amendment's] provisions, . . . when, on the contrary, the lawsof the state, as enacted by its legislative, and construed by its judicial,and administered by its executive departments, recognize and protect the rights of all persons, (then) the amendment imposes no duty and confers no powerupon Congress." The Court held that because the Civil Rights Act applied no matter how well the state may have performed its duty, the act could find no warrant in the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, alsodid not warrant the enactment of the criminal provisions of the act. Althoughthe amendment gave Congress the power to enact enforcing legislation, the Court determined that the civil rights provisions under review were broader than what the Thirteenth Amendment would justify. According to the Court, the provisions could apply even to a conspiracy between two free white men againstanother free white man to deprive the latter of a right accorded him by the laws of the state or of the United States. The Court concluded by saying, sucha law "clearly cannot be authorized by the amendment which simply prohibitsslavery and involuntary servitude."
The final constitutional provision considered by the Court was Article 4, Section 2, declaring that the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states. The object ofthis provision is to inhibit a state from passing legislation discriminatingagainst citizens of other states. The Court concluded that the criminal provisions of the Civil Rights Act could not find support in this article, again because the article was directed against state action, rather than the actionsof private citizens who invade the rights of fellow citizens.
Impact
The Court's ruling that Congress did not have the power under the Constitution to regulate private conduct came during the aftermath of the Civil War whenre-establishing political harmony with Southern states was crucial. The decision reflected the federal government's concern that the Fourteenth Amendmentnot be used to centralize power so as to upset the federal system. This restrictive view of Congress' power rendered ineffective much of the civil rightslegislation passed during Reconstruction. This view prevailed until 1966 when six Supreme Court justices expressly stated in United States v. Guest (1966), that the specific language of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendmentempowers Congress to enact laws punishing all conspiracies--with or withoutstate action--that interfere with Fourteenth Amendment rights. In Guest, the Court was interpreting a statute passed in 1909 criminalizing precisely the same conduct covered by the 1871 act. Four years later, in Adickes v. Kress (1970), the Supreme Court finally declared that Harris hadbeen overruled.
Although the Harris decision invalidated only the criminal provision of the 1871 act, state action also became an issue in civil damages actions. More than a century after their passage, the Civil Rights Acts of the Reconstruction Era continued to be used to assert a variety of civil constitutional claims and continued to present difficult questions of statutory interpretation.
Related Cases
- United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876).
- Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).
- United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966).
- Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144 (1970).
- Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88 (1971).
- Great American Fed. S. & L. Assn. v. Novotny, 442 U.S. 366 (1979).
- Carpenters v. Scott, 463 U.S. 825 (1983).
- Bray v. Alexandria Clinic, 506 U.S. 263 (1993).
User Comments Add a comment…
8 months ago
The Link for Robert R. Smith is: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/tn/crockett/census/census/1880/pg0279d.txt The others: William J. Overton, George W. Wells, Jr., and P. M. Wells family members are listed and are definitely not among the "African American Records," but you have to order those sheets with payment. http://www.tngenweb.org/haywood/index.html http://www.rootsweb.com/~tncrocke/
10 months ago
Although it has little bearing on the results of the case, there is an error of fact in the description above. In US v Harris, the four men who were taken from the jail and beaten (one killed) were white, not black. I don't know where this error came from, probably arose from the fact that this case invalidated parts of the Ku Klux Act. If you would like to verify this, all four men are listed in the Crockett and/or Haywood Tennessee censuses of 1850 or 186o as white.