Civil Rights Act

“ Its purpose is to promote a more abiding commitment to freedom, a more constant pursuit of justice, and a deeper respect for human dignity.
We will achieve these goals because most Americans are law-abiding citizens who want to do what is right.
This is why the Civil Rights Act relies first on voluntary compliance, then on the efforts of local communities and States to secure the rights of citizens. It provides for the national authority to step in only when others cannot or will not do the job. ”

“ There is, first, the Amendment abolishing Slavery, with its clause conferring on Congress the power to enforce it by appropriate legislation, in pursuance of which Congress has already passed the Civil Rights Act, which is applicable to the North as well as the South. Clearly, and most obviously beyond all question, if it can pass a Civil Rights Act, it can also pass a Political Rights Act; for each is appropriate to enforce the abolition of Slavery, and to complete this work. ”

“ If the rights intended to be secured by the act of 1875 are such as belong to the citizen in common or equally with other citizens in the same State, then it is not to be denied that such legislation is peculiarly appropriate to the end which Congress is authorized to accomplish, viz., to protect the citizen, in respect of such rights, against discrimination on account of his race. ”

“ These principles are reflected in the Constitution, which promises equal protection of the laws. These principles are also enshrined in our Nation’s anti-discrimination laws, among them Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.) ”

“ Those graduates include Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as leaders in the fields of education, science, medicine, law, entertainment, literature, the military, and politics who have made major contributions to the civil rights movement and the creation of a more equitable society. (14) Congress has an obligation to lead America's continued struggle to fight discrimination and ensure equal rights for all. (15) The year 2014 will mark the semicentennial of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ”

“ All persons shall be entitled to be free, at any establishment or place, from discrimination or segregation of any kind on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin, if such discrimination or segregation is or purports to be required by any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, rule, or order of a State or any agency or political subdivision thereof. ”

“ Justice O'CONNOR, joined by THE CHIEF JUSTICE, Justice WHITE, and Justice KENNEDY, concluded in Part II that the text and legislative history of both the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Civil Rights Act of 1871, the precursors of §§ 1981 and 1983 respectively, demonstrate that § 1981 does not provide an independent federal damages remedy for racial discrimination by local governmental entities; rather, Congress intended that the explicit remedial provisions of § 1983 control in the context of § 1981 damages actions against state actors. ”

“ It is immaterial whether these complaints were justified or not; they were believed by many persons to be well-founded. To remove the cause of them; to obviate objections to the validity of legislation similar to that contained in the first section of the Civil Rights Act; to prevent the possibility of hostile and discriminating legislation in future by a State against any citizen of the United States, and the enforcement of any such legislation already had ”

“ Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that "no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." ”

“ In its brief in this Court the Government argues that this provision is invalid on its face as contrary to § 101 (a) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 241, amending § 131 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, 71 Stat. ”

“ As so amended the bill when adopted became the present § 20 of the Criminal Code which read exactly as did § 2 of the Civil Rights Act, except that the word 'aliens' was added and the word 'citizens' was substituted for the phrase 'white persons'. ”

“ In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race. They interfere with the municipal legislation of the States, with the relations existing exclusively between a State and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State—an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced in, must sap and destroy our federative system of limited powers and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States. ”

“ In all our history, in all our experience as people living under Federal and State law, no such system as that contemplated by the details of this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted. They establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race. ”

“ I think, however, the States have the obligation not merely to give lip service to, but to follow both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, and that whenever such qualifications are prescribed, whatever they may be, they should be applied impartially and equitably to every American citizen, regardless of his race, color, creed, or previous condition of servitude. ”

“ It shall be the function of the Service to provide assistance to communities and persons therein in resolving disputes, disagreements, or difficulties relating to discriminatory practices based on race, color, or national origin which impair the rights of persons in such communities under the Constitution or laws of the United States or which affect or may affect interstate commerce. ”

“ If, as is claimed by many, all persons who are native born already are, by virtue of the Constitution, citizens of the United States, the passage of the pending bill can not be necessary to make them such. If, on the other hand, such persons are not citizens, as may be assumed from the proposed legislation to make them such, the grave question presents itself whether, when eleven of the thirty-six States are unrepresented in Congress at the present time, it is sound policy to make our entire colored population and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States. ”

“ Four millions of them have just emerged from slavery into freedom....It may also be asked whether it is necessary that they should be declared citizens in order that they may be secured in the enjoyment of the civil rights proposed to be conferred by the bill. ”

“ But the civil rights bill, if made a law, would have other effects which its originator did certainly not design it to have—effects injuriously touching the interests of the colored people themselves. ”

“ Exemption from race discrimination in respect of the civil rights which are fundamental in citizenship in a republican government, is, as we have seen, a new constitutional right, created by the nation, with express power in congress, by legislation, to enforce the constitutional provision from which it is derived. ”

“ I venture, with all respect for the opinion of others, to insist that the national legislature may, without transcending the limits of the constitution, do for human liberty and the fundamental rights of American citizenship, what it did, with the sanction of this court, for the protection of slavery and the rights of the masters of fugitive slaves. ”

“ I do not contend that the Thirteenth Amendment invests Congress with authority, by legislation, to define and regulate the entire body of the civil rights which citizens enjoy, or may enjoy, in the several States. ”

“ When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men's rights are protected. ”

“ Congress, therefore, under its present express power to enforce that amendment by appropriate legislation, might enact laws to protect that people against deprivation, because of their race, of any [Pg 8] civil rights granted to other freemen in the same States; and such legislation may be of a direct and primary character, operating upon States, their officers and agents, and also upon, at least, such individuals and corporations as exercise public functions and wield power and authority under the State. ”

“ What I affirm is that no State, nor the officers of any State, nor any corporation or individual wielding power under State authority for the public benefit or the public convenience, can, consistently either with the freedom established by the fundamental law or with that equality of civil rights which now belongs to every citizen, discriminate against freemen or citizens in those rights because of their race, or because they once labored under the disabilities of slavery imposed upon them as a race. ”

“ Without distinction of color, and there shall be no discrimination in civil rights, or immunities among citizens of the United States in any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery. ”

“ The purpose not to diminish the national authority is distinctly negatived by the express grant of power, by legislation, to enforce every provision of the amendment, including that which, by the grant of citizenship in the state, secures exemption from race discrimination in respect of the civil rights of citizens. ”

“ Justice Miller, who spoke for the majority, pointed out that the colored race, having been freed from slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment, was raised to the dignity of citizenship and equality of civil rights by the Fourteenth Amendment, and the states were prohibited from abridging the privileges and immunities of such citizens, or depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. ”

“ The civil rights bill, which is above any territorial legislation or any adverse judicial decision in a Territory where our power is supreme, has guarantied to him beyond peril every civil right known under the Constitution of the United States . ”

“ The difficulty has been to compel a recognition of the legal right of the black race to take the rank of citizens, and to secure the enjoyment of privileges belonging, under the law, to them as a component part of the people for whose welfare and happiness government is ordained. ”

“ The Civil Rights Bill was appropriate legislation as defined by the Constitution to forbid any action by private persons which "in the light of our history may reasonably be apprehended to tend, on account of its being incidental to quasi public occupations, to create an institution." ”

“ On Thursday, the day that I left Washington, we sent to him a bill which secures to all the colored population of the southern states equal rights before the law, the civil rights bill. It declares that no state shall exclude any man on account of his color from any of the natural rights which, by the Declaration of Independence, are declared to be inalienable; it provides that every man may sue and be sued, may plead and be impleaded, may acquire and hold property, may purchase, contract, sell and convey; all those rights are secured to the negro population. ”

“ A review of the relevant congressional debates reveals that the concept of civil rights which lay at the heart both of the contemporary legislative proposals and of the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed the right to equal treatment in public places-a right explicitly recognized to be a 'civil' rather than a 'social' right. ”

“ What is called class legislation would belong to this category, and would be obnoxious to the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment, but would not necessarily be so to the Thirteenth, when not involving the idea of any subjection of one man to another. The Thirteenth Amendment has respect not to distinctions of race or class or color, but to slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment extends its protection to races and classes, and prohibits any State legislation which has the effect of denying to any race or class, or to any individual, the equal protection of the laws. ”

“ It is the State which is prohibited from denying to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, and consequently the statutes partially enumerating what civil rights colored men shall enjoy equally with white persons, founded as they are upon the amendment, are intended for protection against State infringement of those rights. ”