District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co.

Background

A restaurant owner in the District of Columbia was criminally charged for refusing to serve members of the Negro race under two local Acts passed in 1872 and 1873. Lower courts disagreed about whether those old laws still existed after later changes in the District’s government and a 1901 Code. The Municipal Court quashed the charges, the Municipal Court of Appeals partially reversed, and the Court of Appeals later held the laws unenforceable, sending the case to the Supreme Court for review.

Reasoning

The central question was whether Congress could delegate broad municipal lawmaking power to the District’s 1871 Legislative Assembly and whether the 1872 and 1873 anti-discrimination laws survived later governmental changes and the 1901 Code. The Court held that Congress could delegate such municipal power, that the prohibitions against racial refusal of service fall within ordinary local police regulations, and that those laws were saved from repeal by the Code’s exception for police and municipal regulations. The Court found no intervening legislative act that repealed them and rejected the idea that long non-enforcement by administrators had erased the statutes. The Court did not decide whether the 1872 Act was itself repealed by the 1873 Act and left that question to the lower courts on remand.

Real world impact

The decision means the 1870s anti-discrimination statutes remain part of D.C. law and may be enforced against restaurants that refuse service because of race. It restores a legal basis for criminal penalties and license consequences and signals that administrative neglect does not invalidate such statutes.