Yick Wo v. Hopkins 1886
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 569-575 |
Page 569
Petitioner: Yick Wo
Respondent: Peter Hopkins, San Francisco Sheriff
Petitioner's Claim: That San Francisco was enforcing an ordinance (city law) in a discriminatory manner against Chinese persons.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioner: Hall McAllister, D.L. Smoot, L.H. Van Schaick
Chief Lawyers for Respondent: Alfred Clarke, H.G. Sieberst
Justices for the Court: Samuel Blatchford, Joseph P. Bradley, Stephen Johnson Field, Horace Gray, John Marshall Harlan I, Stanley Matthews, Samuel Freeman Miller, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, and William B. Woods
Justices Dissenting: None
Date of Decision: May 10, 1886
Decision: The earlier conviction of Yick Wo for violating the ordinance was unconstitutional.
Significance: The Court ruled that even if a law is written in a non-discriminatory way, enforcing the law in a discriminatory manner is still unconstitutional. The Court also ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to non-U.S. citizens as well as citizens in the country. Importantly, the case represented an early step by the Court to protect individual's civil rights.
Page 570
For Chinese men and boys who had never been more than a few miles from home, starting out on a 7,000 mile journey across the Pacific could be terrifying. Yet with hope and courage, beginning in 1849 they crowded in the holds of ships, then suffered eight long weeks of ocean voyage to arrive in America, the land they called Gum Sahn or Gold Mountain. The first immigrants came to work in the mines during the California gold rush of 1849. Thousands more arrived in the 1860s to help build the Central Pacific Railroad, part of the first transcontinental railroad system in the United States.
Between 1850 and 1880 the Chinese immigrant population in the United States grew from 7,000 to more than 100,000. Approximately 75,000 settled in California, which amounted to ten percent of that state's population. Half of those 75,000 lived in San Francisco. During the 1870s the hardworking Chinese became essential to the important industries of cigar making, shoemaking, woolen mills, and laundering.
Chinese immigrants in America often faced prejudice (hateful attitudes against a group) and lived in segregated (separated by race) neighborhoods, called "Chinatowns." Not only were their customs and language very different from those of Americans, but they were willing to work for low wages. Whites feared losing their jobs to the Chinese. California experienced an economic depression (decrease in business activity with fewer jobs ) in the 1870s suffering widespread unemployment and bank failures. Many unemployed workers blamed their troubles on Chinese laborers. Anti-Chinese riots took place in San Francisco in 1877. Through the 1870s the city of San Francisco passed several ordinances (city laws) to discourage Chinese settlement.
By 1880 Chinese owned most laundries in San Francisco, commonly operated in wooden buildings. On May 26...
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