Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States 1964
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 595-600 |
Page 595
Appellant: Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc.
Appellee: United States
Appellant's Claim: That Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requiring hotel and motel owners to provide accommodations to black Americans, cannot be enforced against privately owned establishments.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant: Moreton Rolleston, Jr.
Chief Lawyer for Appellee: Archibald Cox, U.S. Solicitor General
Justices for the Court: Hugo L. Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., Tom C. Clark, William O. Douglas, Arthur Goldberg, John Marshall Harlan II, Potter Steward, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting: None
Date of Decision: December 14, 1964
Decision: Ruled in favor of the United States by upholding Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Significance: In the first major test of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Court unanimously upheld the act. The decision greatly aided black Americans in their civil rights struggle. The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution proved to be a powerful tool in the battle to end racial discrimination.
Page 596
More often than not, black Americans in the early 1960s had to rely on rented rooms in private homes or the hospitality of friends if they were to travel far from their home. Hotels and motels dotted along highways and in towns provided comfortable accommodations for white Americans but black Americans had no access to these establishments.
The accommodation problem was recognized as early as the 1870s when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The act prohibited discrimination (giving privileges to one group, but not to another similar group) in facilities such as inns and theaters which were privately owned but commonly open to the public. Yet, in Civil Rights Cases (1883) the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the act. Saying that discrimination prohibitions applied only to government actions, the Court ruled the act could not apply to the discriminatory actions of private persons. The government remained powerless to stop discrimination by private persons for the next eighty years.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Page 597
Decades of discrimination led to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Civil rights are a person's individual rights set by law. Black Americans, denied their civil rights, protested in the streets. Congress responded to the social unrest by passing comprehensive civil rights legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title II...
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