Slaughter-House Cases
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| In Re Slaughter-House Cases | ||||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued January 11th, 1872 Reargued February 3rd-5th, 1873 Decided April 14th, 1873 |
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| The 14th Amendment does not protect the privileges and immunities of state citizenship, only national citizenship. The privileges and immunities of state citizenship may not be interfered with by the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection, Due Process, and Privileges and Immunities Clauses. | ||||||||
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| U.S. Const. Art. IV. sec. 2, 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments |
The Slaughter-House Cases, represented a block appeal to the United States Supreme Court testing Section 1 of the relatively new Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It is viewed as a pivotal case in early civil rights law, as it narrowly read the Fourteenth Amendment to protect only "privileges or immunities" conferred by virtue of national but not state citizenship, a distinction which persists to this day.
Properly known as Slaughter-House Cases, the decision consolidated three similar cases:
- The Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company
- Paul Esteben, L. Ruch, J. P. Rouede, W. Maylie, S. Firmberg, B. Beaubay, William Fagan, J. D. Broderick, N. Seibel, M. Lannes, J. Gitzinger, J. P. Aycock, D. Verges, The Live-Stock Dealers' and Butchers' Association of New Orleans, and Charles Cavaroc v. The State of Louisiana, ex rel. S. Belden, Attorney-General
- The Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company
In 1869, the Louisiana legislature passed a law that allowed the city of New Orleans to create a corporation that centralized all slaughterhouse operations in the city. The stated purpose of the new arrangement was to restrict the dumping of remains and waste in waterways and provide a single place for animals to be kept and slaughtered; critics called it a legal monopoly based on political patronage designed to shut down independent butchers. There were a number of provisions in the act creating the corporation, the pertinent being:
- fixed prices for the offloading and maintenance of livestock
- fixed prices for butchers who want to use the facilities
- a clause describing the process of collecting unpaid monies
- a provision for a livestock inspector to ascertain animal health and fitness
Twenty-five butchers and those involved in the unloading, feeding, slaughtering, and other activities associated with converting livestock into food filed various actions attempting to halt the creation of the new corporation and any contemplated changes to the slaughtering business in New Orleans.
The lower courts found in favor of the new corporation in all cases. Five cases were appealed to the Supreme Court. The butchers based their claims on the due process, privileges or immunities and equal protection clauses in the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified by the states only five years before the decision in 1868. Their attorney, former Supreme Court Justice John A. Campbell (who had retired due to his Confederate loyalties), argued for a new, broad reading of the Fourteenth Amendment: the new Amendment protected the rights of individuals to "sustain their lives through labor," as well as the freed slaves, he argued.
In a five-four decision written by Justice Samuel Freeman Miller issued on April 14, 1873, the court held to a narrow interpretation of the amendment and ruled that it did not restrict the police powers of the state. The court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities clause affected only rights of "national citizenship," and not state citizenship. Therefore the butchers' Fourteenth Amendment rights had not been violated. The court saw due process in a procedural light at this time rather than substantive. The court further held that the amendment was primarily intended to protect former slaves and so could not be broadly applied.
Justice Stephen J. Field, joined by three other justices, wrote an influential dissent in which he accepted Campbell's reading of the amendment as not confined to protection of freed slaves, but rather as embracing the common law presumption in favor of an individual right to pursue a legitimate occupation. Field's reading of the due process clause of the amendment would prevail in future cases in which the court read the amendment broadly to protect property interests against hostile state laws.
This case has been and continues to be referred to in some conspiracy theories involving the extension of government powers. This is because it is one of the first decisions in which the court's opinion discussed a form of dual citizenship: State Citizens and U.S. Citizens.
Note that the Dred Scott case refers to state citizenship and U.S. citizenship as two different kinds of citizenship.
[edit] Further reading
- Jonathan Lurie & Ronald Labbe; "Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment"; 2003, University Press of Kansas, ISBN 0-7006-1290-4; Michael A. Ross, Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era. Louisiana State University Press (2003); Michael A. Ross, "Justice Miller’s Reconstruction: The Slaughter-House Cases, Health Codes, and Civil Rights in New Orleans, 1861-1873," Journal of Southern History, Vol LXIV, No. 4, (Nov 1998), 649-676.
