Good time to remember that ordinary people of color pioneered our modern Constitutional rights by bringing legal cases against racist laws & attitudes. Equal Protection owes a debt to a Chinese laundry owner who brought the case of Yick Wo in 1886 to SCOTUS. #AAPIHeritageMonth
In Yick Wo v. Hopkins 118 U.S. 356 (1886) laundry owner Lee Yick challenged the racist application of a San Francisco law requiring permits for laundries housed in wooden buildings. Why was it racist? Because of the 320 laundries in SF, 310 were wood & 240 were owned by Chinese
but not a single Chinese laundry was granted a permit. Chinese immigrants Lee Yick & Wo Lee were jailed after refusing to pay fines. They sued, arguing that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment even though it was race neutral on its face.
The case ultimately reached SCOTUS where a unanimous court made the landmark decision that a law might appear to be race neutral on its face - meaning it could apply to all races - but still violate the Equal Protection Clause if the intent in its administration was racist.
"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... the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution." Justice Matthews
This holding undercut 10 years later by Plessy v. Ferguson - upholding separate but equal mandated state education - but the Yick Wo case principle made a resurgence as a fundamental basis for modern civil rights cases starting in the 1950s & has been cited in 150+ SCOTUS cases.
The very name of the case reflects the racism of the times - case is named Yick Wo but neither of the plaintiffs were named Yick Wo - the sheriff who arrested Lee Yick booked him as Yick Wo b/c that was the name of the laundry so the Sheriff assumed that was his name...
Lee Yick's fate has been lost in time - we do not even know what happened to him later but his legacy lives on in each day of our country.
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