Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), argued 14 Apr. 1886, decided 10 May 1886 by vote of 9 to 0; Matthews for the Court. During the summer of 1885, many Chinese in San Francisco, including Yick Wo, violated a municipal laundry ordinance to test its validity. This local law allowed only the city's board of supervisors to approve laundry operating licenses. Failure to secure a license and continuing to do business could result in a misdemeanor conviction, a thousand‐dollar fine, and a jail term of up to six months. The ordinance did not apply to laundries located in brick buildings.

This ordinance was clearly aimed at Chinese businesses because Chinese laundries were invariably located in wooden buildings. The law followed several other attempts by San Francisco to discourage Chinese settlement. In 1870, the Cubic Air Ordinance restricted the number of occupants in Chinese apartment buildings based upon certain space requirements. The Queue Ordinance of 1876 stipulated that all Chinese prisoners had to have their hair cut, and the No Special Police for Chinese Quarter Ordinance of 1878 denied Chinatown police protection. In addition, Chinese laundries had to pay a special fee if they used horse‐drawn delivery vehicles.

The laundry ordinance was also drafted with white Californians' concern about the Chinese presence in mind. From 1820 up to 1882, the year the first Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress, open immigration brought many Chinese to California. In 1880, approximately 75,000 Chinese lived in California, amounting to 10 percent of that state's population. Nearly half of California's Chinese were concentrated in the San Francisco area.

According to an 1881–1882 labor census taken in San Francisco, Chinese were primarily employed in four businesses: making cigars, shoes, and clothes, and operating laundries. Most laundries in San Francisco were owned by Chinese. Yick Wo had lived in California since 1861 and had been in the laundry business for twenty‐two years. His laundry had been inspected by local authorities as late as 1884 and found safe. But in 1885 the board of supervisors denied him and two hundred other Chinese laundry owners their licenses. Only one Chinese laundry owner was given a license, and she had probably not been identified as Chinese. The board was obviously seeking to wipe out the Chinese laundry business.

After Yick Wo was denied his license, he continued to operate, and was arrested. In police court Yick Wo was found guilty, and fined ten dollars. He refused to pay and was ordered to jail for ten days. Yick Wo then petitioned the California supreme court for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition was denied, and he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, naming the sheriff, a man named Hopkins, in the suit.

Yick Wo claimed that the ordinance abrogated his Fourteenth Amendment rights because of the blatant discriminatory results of its implementation. He presented statistical evidence showing the discrimination to San Francisco's Chinese community. Only 25 percent of San Francisco laundries could operate under the board of supervisors' licensing requirements, seventy‐nine of them owned by non‐Chinese and only one owned by a Chinese. His attorneys also contended that the ordinance violated China's 1880 treaty with the United States. San Francisco argued that the Fourteenth Amendment could not infringe upon the police power granted to cities and states.

In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court found for Yick Wo and directed his discharge. Justice Stanley Matthews wrote that the ordinances as enforced conferred an authority broader than the traditional police power to regulate the use of property. This power was discriminatory and constituted class legislation prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. Matthews held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all persons, citizens and aliens alike. For Matthews, legitimate police power had to regulate safety and health practices with specificity, and the power had to be applied in good faith. Such was not the circumstance for the Chinese in San Francisco.

The Court had clearly expanded the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. State police power had been limited and the Due Process Clause was now available to apply to local governmental discriminatory actions. Although the Yick Wo decision was potentially sweeping, it did not achieve instant recognition. After 1886 the Supreme Court's composition changed, and the Court did not build upon this precedent until the mid‐twentieth century.

See also Alienage and Naturalization; Due Process, Substantive; Equal Protection; Race and Racism.

Bibliography

William L. Tang , The Legal Status of the Chinese in America, in The Chinese in America, edited by Paul K. T. Sih and Leonard B. Allen (1976), pp. 3–15.
Charles J. McClain , In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth Century America (1994).

John R. Wunder

YICK WO V. HOPKINS

An 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S. Ct. 1064, 30 L. Ed. 220 (1886), held that the unequal application of a law violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

A law that is racially neutral on its face may be deliberately administered in a discriminatory way, or it may have been enacted in order to disadvantage a racial minority. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the Supreme Court stated for the first time that a state or municipal law that appears to be fair on its face will be declared unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment because of its discriminatory purpose.

Yick Wo, a native and subject of China, was convicted and imprisoned for violating an ordinance of the city of San Francisco, California, which made it unlawful to maintain a laundry "without having first obtained the consent of the board of supervisors, except the same be located in a building constructed either of brick or stone." The 1880 ordinance was neutral on its face, but its purpose and its administration appeared suspect to Yick Wo and other Chinese. Most laundries in San Francisco were owned by Chinese and were constructed out of wood. The few laundries owned by whites were located in brick buildings. At the time the ordinance was passed, Chinese immigration had brought around 75,000 Chinese to California, half of whom lived in San Francisco. The white population became increasingly anti-Chinese and sought ways to control the Chinese population.

In 1885 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors denied Yick Wo and two hundred other Chinese laundry owners their licenses, even though their establishments had previously passed city inspections. After he was denied his license, Yick Wo continued to operate his business. He was eventually arrested and jailed for ten days for violating the ordinance. More than one hundred and fifty other Chinese laundry owners were also arrested for violating the ordinance.

On appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Yick Wo argued that the ordinance violated the Fourteenth Amendment, as the law denied him equal protection of the laws. He pointed out that only one-quarter of the laundries could operate under the ordinance, with 73 owned by non-Chinese and only one owned by a Chinese. San Francisco contended the ordinance was a valid exercise of the police powers granted by the U.S. Constitution to cities and states.

Justice stanley matthews, writing for a unanimous court, struck down the ordinance. Matthews looked past the neutral language to strike down the ordinance as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. He found that the division between wood and brick buildings was an "arbitrary line." Moreover, whatever the intent of the law may have been, the administration of the ordinance was carried out "with a mind so unequal and oppressive as to amount to a practical denial by the state" of equal protection of the laws.

Matthews held that:

Though the law itself be fair on its face, and impartial in appliance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the constitution.

Because the unequal application of the ordinance furthered "unjust and illegal discrimination," the Court ruled that the ordinance was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Yick Wo has become a central part of civil rights jurisprudence. If a law has a discriminatory purpose or is administered unequally, courts will apply the Fourteenth Amendment and strike down the law. Yick Wo is also the source of modern civil rights disparate impact cases, in which discrimination is established by statistical inequality rather than through proof of intentional discrimination.

further readings

Kaylor, Dan. 1980. "Orders that Wouldn't Wash: Historical Background of Yick Wo v. Hopkins." Lincoln Law Review 11 (spring).

Maltz, Earl M. 1994. "The Federal Government and the Problem of Chinese Rights in the Era of the Fourteenth Amendment." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 17 (winter).

Yick Wo v. Hopkins: 1886

Appellant: Yick Wo
Defendant: Sheriff Peter Hopkins, San Francisco, California
Appellant Claim: That San Francisco was enforcing an ordinance in an unlawfully discriminatory manner against the defendant and other Chinese persons
Chief Defense Lawyers: Alfred Clarke and H. G. Sieberst
Chief Lawyers for Appellant: Hall McAllister, D.L. Smoot, and L.H. Van Schaick
Justices: Samuel Blatchford, Joseph P. Bradley, Stephen J. Field, Horace Gray, John Marshall Harlan, Stanley Matthews, Samuel F. Miller, Morrison Waite, and William B. Woods
Place: Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision: May 10, 1886
Decision: That Yick Wo's conviction for violating the ordinance was unconstitutional

SIGNIFICANCE: In Yick Wo, the Supreme Court proclaimed that even if a law was nondiscriminatory, enforcing the law in a discriminatory manner was unconstitutional.

On May 26, 1880, the City of San Francisco, California enacted an ordinance requiring all commercial laundries to be in brick or stone buildings. Wooden buildings were permissible, but only with the Board of Supervisors' approval. The ordinance made no distinction between laundries run by Chinese immigrants and those run by whites. However, the ordinance was enforced in a blatantly racist manner. The board rubber-stamped its approval of white petitions to run laundries in wooden buildings, but denied every one of the nearly 200 Chinese petitions.

Sheriff Peter Hopkins enforced the ordinance, arresting Yick Wo and over 150 other Chinese persons who continued to run laundries in wooden buildings without board approval. Yick Wo was convicted and ordered to pay a fine of $10 or spend 10 days in jail. The California Supreme Court upheld his conviction, and he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for an order preventing San Francisco in the person of Sheriff Hopkins from carrying out the sentence. Hopkins was represented by Alfred Clarke and H.G. Sieberst and Yick Wo was represented by Hall McAllister, D.L. Smoot and L. H. Van Schaick. The Supreme Court heard both sides' arguments on April 14, 1886 and issued its decision on May 10, 1886.

The Court reversed Yick Wo's conviction, holding that the ordinance was being unfairly administered:

Though the law itself be fair on its face and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution.…

And while this consent of the supervisors is withheld from [Yick Wo] and from two hundred others who have also petitioned, all of whom happen to be Chinese subjects, eighty others, not Chinese subjects, are permitted to carry on the same business under similar conditions. The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted, that no reason for it exists except hostility to the race and nationality to which the petitioners belong.

The significance of the Yick Wo decision is that, even if a law is nondiscriminatory, enforcing the law in a discriminatory manner is unconstitutional.

—Stephen G. Christianson

Suggestions for Further Reading

Nelson, William Edward. The Fourteenth Amendment. From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Pole, J. R. The Pursuit of Equality in American History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.