Hodges v. United States

Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1 (1906), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court limiting the power of Congress to make laws under the Thirteenth Amendment . Three white men had been convicted in the Eastern Arkansas District Court for conspiring against black sawmill workers.

The statute that was used to convict the men prohibits conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their constitutional liberties, including the right to make contracts. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction, holding that Congress did not have the right to intervene against racially motivated interference with labor contracts.

Contents

• 1 District Courts

• 2 Supreme Court

  • 2.1 Oral arguments

  • 2.2 Majority opinion

  • 2.3 Dissenting opinion

• 3 Legacy

• 4 Analysis

• 5 References

  • 5.1 Sources

• 6 External links

District Courts

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On 8 May 1903, Arkansas Attorney General William G. Whipple wrote to U.S. Attorney General Philander C. Knox to announce (and request funding for) investigation of a “white-capping ” case. Whipple wrote that an “inferior class of white men feeling themselves unable to compete with colored tenants combined to drive them out of the country.” Knox approved the investigation, responding that the Department of Justice was “alive to the aggressive attitude of such organized bands as those to which you refer, and determined to meet such emergencies with proper and decisive action”.

By October 1903, a grand jury had indicted two groups of White men accused of white-capping. The first case, filed as United States v. Morris, involved a group of 11 men accused of targeting sharecroppers . The second, United States v. Maples, accused 15 men of intimidating Black workers at a lumber mill in Whitehall, Arkansas . The case against them was made primarily under two statutes of the U.S. Code.

§1977 gives “all persons” in the U.S. the same right to make contracts “as is enjoyed by white citizens” :

All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every state and territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.

§5508, originating with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and modified by the Enforcement Act of 1870 , outlaws conspiracy to deprive citizens of their Constitutional freedoms:

SEC. 5508. If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or if two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured, they shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars and imprisoned not more than ten years, and shall, moreover, be thereafter ineligible to any office or place of honor, profit or trust created by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

The defendants filed demurrers arguing that these laws infringed on states' rights . These were overruled by Judge Jacob Trieber in federal district court. Trieber acknowledged that, particularly in light of the _Civil Rights Cases _ (1883), the Fourteenth Amendment could only be invoked to redress inequality of state actors . Citing the decision of Judge Noah Swayne in U. S. v. Rhodes (1866), Trieber invoked the Thirteenth Amendment and held that the right to make contracts was a “fundamental” right.

The state could obtain no conviction in Morris, unable to produce solid evidence even though, in Whipple's words, “the jurors, as well as the Court, were convinced we had indicted the right men”. Of the 15 accused in Maples, the jury convicted 3: William Clampit, Wash McKinney, and Reuben Hodges. The three men convicted in Morris appealed their case (now Hodges v. United States), which the Supreme Court accepted in March 1904.

Supreme Court

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Lawyers for Clampit, McKinney, and Hodges argued that the intended effect of the Thirteenth Amendment had been completed with emancipation and furthermore that no federally recognized right to make contracts existed at the time of its adoption. The Department of Justice, now led by Attorney General William Henry Moody (a future Supreme Court justice), defended the statutes. Moody acknowledged the “state actor” limitation to the Fourteenth Amendment and focused, like Trieber, on the Thirteenth Amendment. Moody argued that the Thirteenth Amendment guarantees “practical freedom”—including the right to make a contract, work, and be compensated.

Oral arguments

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In oral arguments, Justice David Josiah Brewer asked whether all Black workers enjoyed special protections because of the Thirteenth Amendment. Moody responded that Black and White workers enjoyed the same rights and that the Thirteenth Amendment only applied if workers were targeted because they were Black. In fact, Moody argued that any type of racial hatred might be included. Justice William R. Day replied: “This amendment everybody supposed was intended to protect the colored race. Other races were never thought of at all.” To which said Moody:

I can easily rest this case upon the fact that the persons injured were of the colored race, and therefore peculiarly within the protection of the thirteenth amendment. But I have not been able to satisfy my mind that this amendment makes a permanent distinction between negroes and persons of other races. Its benefits extend to all persons of all races.

Moody stated later in the arguments: “Concerted action against another person, on account of his race, to deprive them of one of the essential rights to freedom, the right to labor, is a violation of the thirteenth amendment.”

Brewer raised questions about this position based on the precedent it might set for labor law. He asked:

One of another race – against any person of another race – wouldn’t the action of labor organizations in forbidding any person to labor unless he was a member of their organizations be depriving him of liberty? […]

Take the case of an Irishman who strikes an Italian working on the railroad. A body of Irish say, We do not like ‘Dagos’ and will not work with them, and they drive them off; they wouldn’t do that if they were Irish. [...] The Irishman goes into a bar room and he sees an Italian there and knocks him down. Would that be a violation under your theory?

Moody replied, “I wouldn't go that far.”

Moody argued finally that the “war of races” now encompassed the whole nation, and that:

if the Negro who is in our midst can be denied the right to work and must live on the outskirts of civilization, he will become more dangerous than the wild beasts, because he has a higher intelligence than the most intelligent beast. He will become an outcast lurking about the borders and living by depredation.

The Court ruled 7–2 for Hodges, holding the federal statutes unconstitutional and overruling the Arkansas convictions.

Majority opinion

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The majority opinion, authored by Brewer, maintained that the original constitution had intended for state governments to make contract law. According to the Tenth Amendment , those powers not explic

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