Bennett Eighinger
10/6/15

The Civil Rights Cases
109 U.S. 3 (1883)

Procedural Posture: In 1883, five cases were brought before separate lower courts where Black Americans had sued theaters, hotels and transit companies for refusing them admittance or otherwise excluding them from institutions that had been deemed as “white only”: United States v. Stanley, United States v. Ryan, United States v. Nichols, United States v. Singleton, and Robinson v. Memphis & Charleston Railroad. The plaintiffs were individually seeking writs of error for being denied access to these facilities as it violated their Constitutional rights as citizens under the Equal Protection clause in the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The decision was made that the Supreme Court would rule on all 5 cases as one Supreme Court case for efficiency and consistency. …show more content…
Many states, including Virginia, ignored legislation such as the Equal Protection clause and instituted laws that denied African Americans their Constitutional rights as citizens. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was previously upheld in a precedent set in 1879 by the Strauder v. West Virginia case (100 U.S. 303), where the Supreme Court established that it went explicitly against the Equal Protection rights that were guaranteed to blacks, specifically black men to deny them the right to serve on juries. The decision made by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1883 involved five consolidated cases, which were all brought before separate lower courts where Black Americans had sued theaters, hotels and transit companies for refusing them admittance or otherwise excluding them from institutions that had been deemed as “white