Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Yick Wo v. Hopkins


The Constitution Project: Yick Wo
and the Equal Protection Clause
On May 10, 1886, the United States Supreme Court ruled on a law that was impartial to any racial background, particularly the Chinese immigrants. In the 1800s, there were millions of Chinese immigrants living in Southern California and many faced discrimination due to their Asian background. Many of them faced legal issues and economic drawback from the community due to the bias that went on during the time period. Because of this, around 89% of the Chinese immigrants who lived in the San Francisco area went into the laundry business. During the up-rising of the laundry career, the city of San Francisco passed a law that declared an individual could not have a laundry business in wooden buildings without a permit from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Supposedly, the law for having a permit was strictly out of the concern for safety, but the story later revealed that it was more than a logical reason; instead, it was more of an act of racial discrimination. More than half of the laundry businesses in the city of San Francisco were owned by Chinese immigrants. The Board of Supervisors would withhold the legal permits for Chinese immigrants that wished to continue his/her business.
Yick Wo came in the picture and changed the whole thing for the Chinese immigrants. Wo owned a laundry business for years and held an official license (issued by the Board of Fire-Wardens) to run his business. However, Wo was fined $10 for his violation of the law. Wo went to prison after he failed to pay the fine and he sued for a writ of habeas corpus. Wo went to court and stated that even before the new laundry law, his laundry business in the wooden building always passed the fire safety inspection. The Court found that the new laundry law was created out of discrimination. They also found that the administrators of the law abused their authority. Even though during this time the Chinese immigrants were not yet Americans, the court still issued the rights for equal protection for Chinese laundry owners under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Because of Wo’s fight with the administrators of law, all the charges against the other laundry owners were also dropped. Although Wo’s fight did not make a 180 shift for the racial issues that occurred during that time period, it was certainly a step towards equality for all Americans. 

Posted by Mary Hungju Chen

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