United States v. Harris

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 when re-establishing political harmony with Southern states was crucial. The decision reflected the federal government's concern that the Fourteenth Amendment not be used to centralize power so as to upset the federal system. This restrictive view of Congress' power rendered ineffective much of the civil rights legislation 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 Amendment empowers Congress to enact laws punishing all conspiracies--with or without state 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 had been 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.