Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall. (83 U.S.) 36 (1873), argued 3–5 Feb. 1873, decided 14 Apr. 1873 by vote of 5 to 4; Miller for the Court, Field, Bradley, Chase, Swayne in dissent. The Slaughterhouse Cases consisted of three suits precipitated by a Louisiana law that incorporated the Crescent City Live‐Stock Landing and Slaughtering Company and required that all butchering of animals in New Orleans be done in its facilities. The cases provided the first important opportunity for the Supreme Court to interpret the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870. In an opinion that remains controversial but has never been overruled, the majority of the justices severely limited the meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Louisiana passed the law at issue at a time when many state and local governments were enacting health reforms. Regulations to control the slaughtering of animals were enacted in many localities, because it was a business entailing grave health risks to surrounding neighborhoods in an age before modern refrigeration technology and insect control. Centralizing slaughterhouse operations was one means of regulation.

Although it was conceivable that a state itself might build and operate a new central slaughterhouse, it had been a common practice for states to incorporate privately owned businesses to assume the expense of providing needed public facilities in return for a government‐regulated monopoly. Financially strapped after the Civil War, Louisiana chose this alternative. However, this decision presented the problem of choosing who would have the privilege of incorporating the new slaughterhouse company and earning the tidy profit likely to accrue. As was usual in nineteenth‐century America, the privilege went to a group of wealthy and politically influential individuals, who brought leading politicians into the concern. Naturally, when governments chose this method to provide public services or facilities, they opened themselves to charges of corruption. Dissatisfied citizens perceived such transactions to confer illicit special privileges on the influential few at the expense of the rest of the people.

This was especially the case in Louisiana. That state was governed by Republicans, elected primarily by black voters enfranchised as part of Reconstruction. Most white Louisianans believed that the white leaders of the Louisiana Republican party were “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags,” interested solely in plunder. Democrats charged that the slaughterhouse law was another example of Republican corruption, even though both Democrats and Republicans were among the incorporators of the Crescent City Company.

The slaughterhouse laws imposed by the states seriously inconvenienced butchers. Some of them were accustomed to slaughtering animals on their own property. Others, like those in New Orleans, had formed trade associations that operated slaughterhouses. Now they were required to undertake their business at a distance from the city and often at a single center where they were required to pay fees. In many places affected butchers filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the laws. However, few litigants or counsel in the late 1860s and early 1870s perceived the potential of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the ordinary rights of white citizens; it had been discussed almost entirely in terms of the slavery controversy. Therefore the butchers brought their suits in state courts, alleging violation of state constitutions. Everywhere they lost, with state courts holding the laws to be legitimate exercises of the police power—the power to make laws to promote the health, safety, and morals of the community.

However, the Louisiana butchers were blessed with outstanding counsel, among them John A. Campbell, former associate justice of the Supreme Court, who had resigned when his state seceded from the Union. Campbell filed a petition in the local state court for an injunction on behalf of the Butchers' Benevolent Association, which operated a slaughterhouse for its members. He asked the court to bar the Crescent City Company from interfering with the association's slaughterhouse business or that of its members. Although Campbell presented arguments similar to those made by butchers in other states, he added the novel claim that the law contravened the Fourteenth Amendment. The new amendment forbade states from enforcing “any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” among which, Campbell argued, was the right to labor freely in an honest avocation.

The issue was taken to the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1870. The butchers' lawyers argued that the law went beyond the inherent powers of legislation and violated both the state constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment, because it deprived them of property rights, not for the good of the community, but for the private gain of monopolists. With only one dissent, the judges rejected the butchers' contention that the law worked such a redistribution of property rights.

The butchers appealed to the Supreme Court, based on their Fourteenth Amendment argument. But in the meantime the Crescent City Company secured state court injunctions against the operation of the association slaughterhouse. Campbell petitioned the United States circuit court to issue an injunction forbidding any interference with butchers' activities until the Supreme Court announced its decision. Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley, sitting on circuit, seized the opportunity to offer his view of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Convinced by the legal and business leaders of New Orleans that the law was designed to enrich the incorporators of the Crescent City Company, he ruled that the law was not a legitimate exercise of the police power in Live‐Stock Dealers and Butchers' Association v. Crescent City Live‐Stock Landing and Slaughter‐House Company (1870). In reality the law was designed to confer “a monopoly of a very odious character” (p. 653). Such a law violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the framers of the amendment may not have understood the far‐reaching character of the amendment, it nonetheless worked a revolutionary change in the federal system, giving the national government the power to intervene to prevent such deprivations of basic rights. Among the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States was a right to labor, which the Louisiana slaughterhouse law invaded.

Bradley's opinion was important for its articulation of the Fourteenth Amendment rather than for its practical effect. Federal law forbade United States courts from enjoining the action of state courts. Therefore he could only enjoin the Crescent City Company and state officials from bringing new legal actions against the butchers and their association. The state courts enforced the injunctions the company had already obtained.

When the Slaughterhouse Cases reached the Supreme Court in 1873, the justices faced a major dilemma. The Republican party, sustained by the people of the North, had framed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments in a political struggle that turned primarily upon the future place of African‐Americans in American society (see Race and Racism). By ratifying the amendments and sustaining the Republican party, the people had indicated that black Americans should be entitled to the same civil and political rights as white Americans. Moreover, the rhetoric of the debates suggested a vague but general belief that all Americans, white and black, had certain fundamental rights that had been violated in the interest of slavery and that should henceforth be secured against infringement. Yet at the same time Republicans were committed to maintaining the essentials of the federal system. The primary responsibility for governing relationships among Americans and for protecting their rights from infringement by others would remain with the states, they had insisted.

Republicans tried to reconcile the two commitments by framing laws and constitutional amendments that authorized the national government to intervene when the states themselves infringed rights or failed to protect them. Furthermore, those laws and amendments carefully avoided making black Americans the special object of protection. They guaranteed the rights of all Americans equally. But in fact Republicans had not solved the problem, and the Slaughterhouse Cases made the failure clear. It was not an infringement of black people's civil rights or white unionists' freedom of speech that was at issue, but a health regulation not dissimilar from many passed around the nation. If the Supreme Court agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment authorized it to review such legislation, it could expect similar appeals whenever any person believed a police regulation denied basic rights. Moreover, the Court would in effect be recognizing Congress's power to intervene as well, because the fifth section of the Fourteenth Amendment authorized it to pass legislation appropriate for enforcing the other sections. Yet if the Court declined to review such appeals, how could it avoid undermining the guarantees the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to secure?

The court divided dramatically on the issue. A bare majority ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause did not protect such fundamental rights as the right to labor, while four justices trenchantly dissented. Justice Samuel F. Miller delivered the majority opinion. He concluded that “the one pervading purpose” behind the Civil War Amendments was to secure the freedom of black Americans, not to expand or add protections for the rights of whites (p. 71).

In interpreting the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Miller stressed that it barred states from abridging only the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Even after the Civil War most Americans continued to make a rigid distinction between those areas where the states had jurisdiction and those areas within the jurisdiction of the national government (see Dual Federalism). Miller turned to this distinction to limit the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. The term “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” was meant to differentiate between those rights associated with state citizenship and those associated with United States citizenship, he insisted. The Fourteenth Amendment forbade states only from abridging the latter.

Since the foundation of the Union the states had been conceded to have final authority over such basic rights as the right to labor, Miller said. With that right, the Fourteenth Amendment had nothing to do. To hold otherwise, Miller explained, would make “this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the states, on the civil rights of their own citizens,” authorized to nullify any law it believed violated those rights (p. 78). Moreover, Congress would have the same right to intervene. With some justification, Miller argued that the American people had no such understanding of the amendment when they discussed and ratified it.

The four dissenting justices wrote three different opinions, although they all joined in that prepared by Justice Stephen J. Field. They denied that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to secure the rights of black Americans alone. They insisted that the right to labor was among the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. Justices Bradley and Noah Swayne also insisted that Louisiana's regulation deprived the butchers of property without due process of law, another of the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibitions.

The Slaughterhouse Cases are generally assessed within the context of Reconstruction and the efforts to secure national protection for citizens' rights. They have been heavily criticized by scholars, who argue that Miller artificially narrowed the scope of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Not only did he impose a distinction between the rights of state and national citizenship that had not been in the minds of the framers, but the language of the opinion implied that the rights of national citizenship were few. Some scholars and twentieth‐century Supreme Court justices have argued that the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the United States included at least those listed in the Bill of Rights.

Critics complain that the Slaughterhouse decision severely undermined the ability of the government to protect the rights of the freedmen. There is ample evidence indicating that the decisions did in fact have that effect. Those who opposed national action to protect the rights of African‐American citizens in the 1870s pointed to it to justify their position.

On the other hand, the cases did not involve the rights of black Louisianans. The points at issue were more similar to property rights cases of later years than to the noneconomic civil liberty cases of Reconstruction. From that perspective Miller's opinion may be seen as an articulation of judicial restraint in economic cases rather than an abdication of responsibility to protect human rights. Ultimately the Supreme Court did overturn state regulations affecting the rights Miller placed within state jurisdiction, by holding them among the liberties and property rights that states could not infringe “without due process of law.” Many scholars have perceived a direct line of descent between these decisions and the Slaughterhouse dissents.

See also Due Process, Substantive; Federalism; Privileges and Immunities; Property Rights; State Sovereignty and States' Rights.

Bibliography

Michael Les Benedict , Preserving Federalism: Reconstruction and the Waite Court, Supreme Court Review 1978: 39–79.
Loren Beth , The Slaughter‐House Cases—Revisited, Louisiana Law Review 23 (April 1963): 587–605.
Charles Fairman , History of the Supreme Court, vol. 6, Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864–1888, Part One (1971).
Robert Kaczorowski , The Politics of Judicial Interpretation: The Federal Courts, Department of Justice and Civil Rights, 1866–1876 (1985).

Michael Les Benedict

SLAUGHTER-HOUSE CASES

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Slaughter-House cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 21 L. Ed. 394 (1873), was the first High Court decision to interpret the fourteenth amendment, which had been ratified in 1870. In a controversial decision, the Court, on a 5–4 vote, interpreted the privileges and immunities clause of the amendment as protecting only rights of national citizenship from the actions of the state government. This restrictive reading robbed the Privileges and Immunities Clause of any constitutional significance.

The case involved three lawsuits filed by Louisiana meat-packing companies, challenging a Louisiana state law that allowed one meat company the exclusive right to slaughter livestock in New Orleans. Other packing companies were required to pay a fee for using the slaughterhouses. The state justified this monopoly as a way to prevent health risks to people who lived near slaughterhouses, at a time when there was no refrigeration and no way to control insects. The company that was awarded the monopoly and accompanying financial windfall was politically connected to state legislators, inviting charges of corruption.

The three companies filed suit, claiming that the law violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They argued that this clause protected the right to labor freely. The Louisiana law restricted their freedom to butcher meat. Their challenge was unsuccessful in state court, after which they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court affirmed the state court. Justice samuel f. miller, writing for the majority, ruled that the Privileges and Immunities Clause had limited effect because it only reached privileges and immunities guaranteed by U.S. citizenship, not state citizenship. The clause was meant only to prohibit a state from restricting the rights of noncitizens within its borders if it did not similarly limit the rights of its citizens. Miller noted that because the action challenged privileges of state citizenship, the Privileges and Immunities Clause did not apply.

Some of the rights of national citizenship enumerated by Miller included the right to travel from state to state, the right to vote for federal officeholders, the right to petition Congress to redress grievances, and the right to use the writ of habeas corpus. Any restriction on these national rights of citizenship by a state would be unconstitutional under the Privileges and Immunities Clause. In the case of the meat packers, however, the Court concluded that no national citizenship right was at stake.

Miller also expressed concern that an expansive reading of the Privileges and Immunities Clause would shift too much power to the federal courts and Congress. In his view the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to grant former slaves legal equality, not to grant expanded rights to the general population. The concept of federalism, which grants the states a large measure of power and autonomy, played a role in the majority's decision. The Court reasoned that Congress and the states could not have contemplated the expansion of federal power as argued by the meat packers.

The four dissenting justices thought otherwise, believing that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to do more than just protect the newly freed slaves. Justice stephen j. field, in a dissent joined by the other justices, maintained, "The privileges and immunities designated are those which of right belong to the citizens of all free governments." He saw the clause as a powerful tool to keep state government out of the affairs of business and the economy.

The Privileges and Immunities Clause no longer had any constitutional impact. The Supreme Court came to rely on the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect persons from unconstitutional actions by state government.

further readings

Scarborough, Jane L. 1998. "What If the Butchers in the Slaughter-House Cases Had Won? An Exercise in 'Counterfactual' Doctrine." Maine Law Review 50 (July).

Wildenthal, Bryan H. 2001. "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Slaughter-House Cases: An Essay in Constitutional-Historical Revisionism." Thomas Jefferson Law Review 23 (spring).

cross-references

Due Process of Law; Equal Protection.

Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), a Supreme Court ruling interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment. During the Reconstruction Era, the Louisiana legislature granted certain business and political interests a monopoly over the butchering of animals in New Orleans. Before refrigeration technology was developed, private butchering practices created public‐health problems that properly regulated slaughterhouse monopolies helped to remedy. A group of the city's butchers nonetheless sued, contending that the state law prevented them from freely pursuing their trade.

Defeated in state court, the butchers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court; their lawyer, John A. Campbell, argued that the monopoly violated his clients’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges and immunities (due‐process) clause. The Slaughterhouse cases presented the Court with its first chance to define the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, which had originated in the Republican party's post‐Emancipation efforts to grant black freedmen full rights of citizenship. Campbell contended, however, that the privileges and immunities clause protected economic as well as civil rights from state infringement. The Court divided 5–4. Justice Samuel F. Miller's majority opinion sustained the monopoly, interpreting the privileges and immunities clause narrowly as a guarantee of only a few civil rights, such as the right to petition, and not as a broad charter of economic liberty. The dissenters, to the contrary, embraced Campbell's theory that the clause guaranteed the right to pursue economic activity free of government regulation.

By 1890 a new Court majority reversed this position, adopting the view that the Fourteenth Amendment's due‐process clause protected individual and corporate economic rights. The Court's expansion of economic due process limited state and federal regulation of business, especially of large corporations. Not until 1937, in the New Deal Era, did the Court abandon this construction of the Fourteenth Amendment. Meanwhile, Justice Miller's narrow construction of the civil rights amendment guarantee fostered the triumph of racial segregation. It took the civil rights movement following World War II to overcome the consequences of Miller's Slaughterhouse decision and other prosegregation judicial rulings.
See also Business; Capitalism; Economic Regulation; Emancipation Proclamation; Gilded Age; Laissez‐faire.

Bibliography

Charles Fairman , History of the Supreme Court, vol. 6, Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864–1888, Part One, 1971.
Michael Les Benedict , Preserving Federalism: Reconstruction and the Waite Court, Supreme Court Review (1978): 39–79.

Tony Freyer

SLAUGHTERHOUSE CASES

SLAUGHTERHOUSE CASES, 16 WALL. (83 U.S.) 36 (1873). The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) provided the U.S. Supreme Court its first opportunity to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been adopted in 1868. The 5 to 4 majority held that New Orleans butchers did not have the right to pursue their occupation without utilizing a state-licensed central slaughterhouse, rejecting arguments based upon the common law of monopolies, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Samuel F. Miller, writing for the majority, stated that the "one pervading purpose" of the Reconstruction amendments was to protect "the slave race" and expressed doubts that any circumstances could arise in which the amendments applied to any other race. In three separate opinions, four dissenters supported butchers' claims and three of the dissenters suggested that the Fourteenth Amendment enforced the Bill of Rights against the states.

The split among the justices was over the extent to which the Fourteenth Amendment changed state-federal relations. Previously, Justice Miller had supported a conservative alternative version of the Fourteenth Amendment, implying opposition to the amendment actually adopted, while dissenters Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and Justice Stephen J. Field had favored the amendment's adoption. Because this case attempted to define the boundary between state and federal power, its meaning and the motivation of the justices is the subject of continuing scholarly debate.

Although largely discredited, the case has never been overruled. In Saenz v. Roe (1999), the Supreme Court used the amendment's "privileges or immunities" clause to uphold a right to travel claim, opening the possibility of future reconsideration of the Slaughterhouse Cases.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aynes, Richard L. "Constricting the Law of Freedom: Justice Miller, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Slaughter-House Cases." Chicago-Kent Law Review 70 (1994): 627– 688.

Brandwein, Pamela. Reconstructing Reconstruction: The Supreme Court and the Production of Historical Truth. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999. See especially pp. 61–95.

Fairman, Charles. Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864–88. Part I. New York: Macmillan Company, 1971. See especially pp. 1324–1363.

Richard L.Aynes

See alsoReconstruction ; Saenz v. Roe .

Slaughterhouse Cases cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1873. In 1869 the Louisiana legislature granted a 25-year monopoly to a slaughterhouse concern in New Orleans for the stated purpose of protecting the people's health. Other slaughterhouse operators barred from their trade brought suit, principally on the ground that they had been deprived of their property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment . The U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Samuel F. Miller rendering the majority decision, decided against the slaughterhouse operators, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment had to be considered in light of the original purpose of its framers, i.e., to guarantee the freedom of former black slaves. Although the amendment could not be construed to refer only to black slavery, its scope as originally planned did not include rights such as those in question. A distinction was drawn between United States and state citizenship, and it was held that the amendment did not intend to deprive the state of legal jurisdiction over the civil rights of its citizens. The restraint placed by the Louisiana legislators on the slaughterhouse operators was declared not to deprive them of their property without due process.