THIS DIARY HAS BEEN UPDATED with more information on the Supreme Court Decision which extended Constitutional protections to non-citizens
Yik Wo. Ever hear of him? No, you say? Who is this Yik Wo? and why should we care?
Yik Wo was the first discrimination case brought before the US Supreme Court in 1886.
'For, the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself."
Yik Wo v. Hopkins
Yik Wo v. Hopkins. In 1886, Chinese Laundry owner Yik Wo was imprisoned for operating a Wooden Laundry which was forbidden by statute in the City of San Francisco. (it was a ploy to drive the 310 Chinese laundries out of the business, the remaining 10 were white onwed and brick=enclosed...)
Yik Wo was imprisoned and brought suit against the City charging that the law was a violation of Equal protection since he had been in business for 22 years. The Supreme Court agreed:
f the statute were on its face discriminatory, the Court would've applied strict scrutiny. But it wasn't, so it looked to rational basis. Here, the means of the statute was to prevent fire code violations, but the Court looked to the imprisonment of PL and the 200 Chinese Americans who stood subject to the same treatment, and how no other race was under this particular class, and reasoned that the statute was designed more to clean SF of Chinese laundries, than actual fire code violations. Hence, the statute was invalid.
Rule: Equal Protection Clause of the 14th.
Source
Yet, we hear squat about this in our schools?
Talk about discrimination
More Info
The Supreme Court reversed the conviction, not because the ordinance specifically discriminated against Chinese -- it did not -- but because it was administered in a discriminatory fashion. Yick Wo v. Hopkins is the first instance of the Court inferring the existence of discrimination from data about a law's application, a technique that would be used again in the 1960s to strike down statutes discriminating against African Americans
The Decision:
...The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: "Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality; and the equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws. It is accordingly enacted by §1977 of the Revised Statutes, that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all law and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other." The questions we have to consider and decide in these cases, therefore, are to be treated as involving the rights of every citizen of the United States equally with those of the strangers and aliens who now invoke the jurisdiction of the court.
...The present cases, as shown by the facts disclosed in the record, are within this class. It appears that both petitioners have complied with every requisite, deemed by the law or by the public officers charged with its administration, necessary for the protection of neighboring property from fire, or as a precaution against injury to the public health. No reason whatever, except the will of the supervisors, is assigned why they should not be permitted to carry on, in the accustomed manner, their harmless and useful occupation, on which they depend for a livelihood. And while this consent of the supervisors is withheld from them and from two hundred others who have also petitioned, all of whom happen to be Chinese subjects, eighty others, not Chinese subjects, are permitted to carry on the same business under similar conditions. The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted, that no reason for it exists except hostility to the race and nationality to which the petitioners belong, and which in the eye of the law is not justified. The discrimination is, therefore, illegal, and the public administration which enforces it is a denial of the equal protection of the laws and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The imprisonment of the petitioners is, therefore, illegal, and they must be discharged.