Questions to Answer in Reading the Slaughter-House Cases

In the Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873), the challengers relied on the newly adopted 13^th and 14^th Amendments to assert their claim of unconstitutionality of the Louisiana law creating the Crescent City Livestock Landing and Slaughter-House Company. The challengers made 4 separate arguments:

1. The law violated the 13^th Amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude

2. The law violated the 14^th Amendment Due Process Clause

3. The law violated the 14^th Amendment Equal Protection Clause

4. The law violated the 14^th Amendment Privileges and Immunities Clause.

The Supreme Court rejected all 4 arguments. To understand why attempt to answer the following questions:

1. What sort of servitude was prohibited by the 13^th amendment?

2. If the challengers were required to work for the Crescent City Livestock Landing and Slaughter-House Company if they wanted to work in the livestock landing and slaughterhouse business in New Orleans, why weren’t they forced into personal servitude?

3. The Court indicates (page 450) that the challengers were attempting to expand the meaning of servitude to include a servitude on property, an argument the Court rejects. What property could be said to be subject to a servitude as the result of the passage of the Louisiana law?

4. The Court says it is clear from precedent that the Due Process Clause does not protect the right asserted by the challengers (page 454). How would you describe the right that the challengers are deprived of by the Louisiana law? Have the challengers lost liberty or property?

5. If the challengers have lost liberty or property, why does the Court conclude the loss occurred with due process of law rather than without due process?

6. The equal protection claim also fails (page 454). Are the challengers being discriminated against? If so, what is the basis for the discrimination? According to the Court, what kind of discrimination would the challengers have to suffer in order to successfully assert a claim under the Equal Protection Clause?

7. Is the Court’s reasoning based more on the text of the 13^th and 14^thAmendments or on the history of those amendments?

8. If Louisiana passed a law that said that only white persons could work in the livestock landing and slaughterhouse business in New Orleans, according to the reasoning of the Court in the Slaughter-House Cases, what provisions, if any, of the 13^th and 14^th Amendments would be violated?

9. According to the reasoning of the Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases, if Louisiana passed a law that said that only males could work in the livestock landing and slaughterhouse business in New Orleans, what provisions, if any, of the 13^th and 14^th Amendments would be violated?

10. The Court also rejects the Privileges and Immunities Clause argument. There are two Privileges and Immunities Clauses in the Constitution, one in Article IV that protects the privileges and immunities of citizens of each state from and one in the 14^th Amendment that protects the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. We already know from United Building & Construction Trades Council v. Mayor & Council of Camden and Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, that the privileges and immunities of citizens of each state protected by Article IV include those rights that are fundamental to interstate harmony such as the right to practice a profession. Those rights, as described in Ward v. Maryland, 79 U.S. 418 (1870), also include “the right of a citizen of one State to pass into any other State of the Union for the purpose of engaging in lawful commerce, trade, or business without molestation; to acquire personal property; to take and hold real estate; to maintain actions in the courts of the State; and to be exempt from any higher taxes or excises than are imposed by the State upon its own citizens.” According to the Court, does the 14^th Amendment Privileges and Immunities Clause, which protects the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, protect those same rights or a different group of rights?

11. If the 14^th Amendment Privileges and Immunities Clause protected the right to practice a profession, would you expect the challengers to win or lose in the Slaughterhouse Cases?

12. The Privileges and Immunities Clauses of Article IV protects against discrimination by a state against non-citizens of the state. This provision guarantees equal treatment of citizens of a state and non-citizens of a state in the grant of certain rights. However, if a state refuses to grant its own citizens a particular right they have no claim under the clause. Moreover, if a state refuses to grant its own citizens a particular right then non-citizens have no claim to the protection of that right since all that is guaranteed is equality of treatment. Does the 14^th Amendment Privileges and Immunities Clause also guarantee some form of equality of treatment or does it constitutionally guarantee certain rights to U.S. citizens which states can’t take away either from their own citizens or from non-citizens?

13. The list of privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States was described in the case of Crandall v. Nevada,73 U.S. 35 (1867), as quoted in the Slaughterhouse Cases (page 454). What do those rights include? Why do the protections of these rights seem particularly suited to the role of the federal government?

14. Why did the Court reject the argument that the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment had expanded the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizens to include rights previously protected only by the states and not by the federal government?