LA legislature gave a monopoly in the livestock landing and the slaughterhouse business for the city of New Orleans to the Crescent City Livestock Landing.
The law required that the company allow any person to slaughter animals in the slaughterhouse for a fixed fee.
Several butchers brought suit challenging the grant of the monopoly and arguing that the state law violated their right to practice their trade.
They argued that the restriction created involuntary servitude, deprived them of their property, denied them equal protection, and abridged their privileges or immunities.
Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment declares: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States."
Procedural History
None given.
Issues
Does the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th Amendment mean that the Bill of Rights applies to the states?
Holding/Rule
The privileges or immunities clause does not apply the Bill of Rights to the states.
Reasoning
The statute under consideration is aptly framed to remove from the more densely populated part of the city the noxious slaughterhouses.
Thirteenth Amendment
Was meant to declare the end of slavery, and its purpose was to end all shades of slavery.
Was not meant to apply to all inequalities or forms of servitude.
Effort to perform a "microscopic search to endeavor to find in it references to servitudes, which may have been attached to property in certain localities, requires an effort, to say the least."
Fourteenth Amendment
The pervading purpose was the freedom of the slave race and the protection of the new freemen.
In any fair and just construction of any section or phrase of these amendments, it is necessary to look to the purpose which we have said was the pervading spirit of them all: slavery.
If this clause were meant as a protection to the citizen of a state against his own state, the words "citizen of the state" should have been included, when it is used in the preceding sentence in contradistinction to "citizens of the United States."
"If then there is a difference between the privileges and immunities belonging to a citizen of the US as such, and those belonging to a citizen of the State as such the latter must rest for their security and protection where they have heretofore rested; for they are not embraced by this paragraph of the amendment."
Discussion of Privileges and Immunities Clause:
Corfield v. Coryell interpreted this section.
They are confined to: protection by the gov't with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety.
Was it the purpose of the 14th Amendment to transfer these rights to the states?
There is no evidence that this was the intention of Congress when these amendments were enacted.
This would have such huge consequences, that clear purpose needs to be shown.
Due Process
No due process is deprived here.
Equal protection
We very much doubt whether any action of a state not directed by way of discrimination against blacks will ever come within the purview of the equal protection clause.
