Facially neutral ordinances enforced discriminatorily violate equal protection

Evidence

In  the famous case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), Yick Wo had applied for permission to run his laundry in a wooden building. The supervisors said no, but he kept on working, and was arrested and fined. The Supreme Court overturned Yick Wo’s conviction. The ordinance, as enforced, was a “a denial of the equal protection of the laws and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.” — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2955

Categorization

• DEFINE: The classic case giving the course its doctrinal principle that discriminatory administration of a neutral law can itself be unconstitutional.
• ADDENDUM: Yick Wo’s laundry ordinance is a companion example to the moral-panic and dress-sumptuary cases about how seemingly neutral regulation masks group exclusion.
• XREF: connects to: Equal protection lawsuits over waste siting fail on the intent requirement — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 1121; Title VI regulations allow discrimination suits on discriminatory effect while the statute demands intent — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 1007; Racially harmful policies are enacted under facially neutral justifications — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 563 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Whren v. United States legalized pretextual traffic stops enabling racial profiling #exemplifies (0.95) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 419
• Racially harmful policies are enacted under facially neutral justifications #expands (0.90) — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 563
• Facially neutral tax rules hide racial impact until individual cases surface #expands (0.75)
• Systematic minority discrimination inevitably undermines the impartiality of the rule of law #expands (0.70) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1382