Bouie v. City of Columbia
The Court threw out the trespass convictions of two Black college students who sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in a South Carolina drugstore, ruling that South Carolina's courts had unfairly stretched the trespass law after the fact.
The law as written only punished entering land after being warned to stay off, but the state's top court reinterpreted it, after the sit-in occurred, to also punish staying after being told to leave. The Supreme Court held that retroactively expanding a criminal law this way denies fair warning and violates due process.
How it got here: South Carolina trial and appellate courts convicted the students; the State Supreme Court affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the trespass convictions.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Two Black college students sat down at the whites-only restaurant section of Eckerd's Drug Store in Columbia, South Carolina, where they were otherwise welcome to shop. Store employees put up a "no trespassing" sign and called police, who arrested the students when they refused to leave. They were convicted of criminal trespass under a South Carolina law that, on its face, only punished entering land after being warned not to enter.
The question before the Court
Could South Carolina convict two Black college students of criminal trespass for staying at a segregated lunch counter, under a law that only banned entering land after being told not to enter?
Why it matters
Civil rights protesters staging sit-ins across the South faced criminal trespass charges under laws that state courts sometimes stretched to reach their peaceful protests. This ruling meant states could not convict someone under a surprise, after-the-fact judicial reinterpretation of a criminal statute, giving sit-in demonstrators and others a due-process shield against retroactively expanded prosecutions.
What changes now
The trespass convictions are reversed and the students cannot be punished under this statute for the 1960 sit-in. The decision does not address whether the students could have been convicted under a different, later-enacted South Carolina law explicitly covering refusal to leave, since that law did not exist at the time of their conduct. The ruling stands as a final decision on the merits.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly did not reach the students' separate Equal Protection Clause argument about racial segregation at the lunch counter, resolving the case only on due process grounds. It also left untouched South Carolina's power to apply its new interpretation, or its newly enacted refuse-to-leave statute, to future conduct occurring after those rules were announced.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Goldberg
Justice Goldberg, joined by the Chief Justice, agreed with and joined the Court's due process reasoning and judgment, but wrote separately to say he would also reverse the convictions for the additional reasons given in his concurring opinion in the companion case Bell v. Maryland, which focused on equal protection and state-enforced discrimination.
Concurrence — Justice Douglas
Justice Douglas agreed the convictions should be reversed but did not join the Court's due process opinion. Instead he would have reversed for the reasons in his own opinion in Bell v. Maryland, reflecting a different, broader theory about why the state's enforcement of segregation through trespass law was unconstitutional.
Dissent — Justice Black
“Apart from the fact that they remained in the restaurant after having been ordered to leave, petitioners’ conduct while there was peaceful and orderly.”The dissent's description of the students' otherwise peaceful sit-in conduct.
Justice Black argued the Fourteenth Amendment does not force a private restaurant owner to serve customers he doesn't want, so arresting the students for trespass was not unconstitutional state action. He also argued the statute was not unfairly vague, because South Carolina common law had long treated someone who overstays an invitation as a trespasser, so the students had adequate warning. He would have affirmed the convictions.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the due process principle that a criminal statute must give fair warning of what it forbids, so that people of ordinary intelligence can know in advance whether their conduct is a crime.
- The statute's actual text punished only entering land after being told not to enter, and the students had entered with an invitation and no notice at all, so under the plain words of the law there was no evidence to convict them.
- The state's highest court, however, had reinterpreted the same law after the sit-in occurred to also cover the different act of remaining on the premises after being told to leave, and prior South Carolina cases had never read the statute that way.
- The Court reasoned that an unexpected judicial expansion of a precise criminal statute, applied backward to conduct that happened before the new interpretation existed, works the same unfairness as a legislature passing a retroactive criminal law, which the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws forbids.
- Because the state court's new reading of the statute had no support in the statute's language, in prior South Carolina rulings, or in how other states read similar laws, the Court concluded the students had received no real warning that staying in the booth was a crime under this particular statute.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Connally v. General Const. Co. (269 U.S. 385)
The Court relies on this case's rule that vague criminal laws violate due process by failing to give clear notice.
Reaffirms Lanzetta v. New Jersey (306 U.S. 451)
The Court reaffirms that people cannot be forced to guess at the meaning of penal statutes.
Reaffirms Brinkerhoff-Faris Trust & Sav. Co. v. Hill (281 U.S. 673)
The Court extends this case's due-process logic about retroactive court rulings to criminal statute interpretation.
Reaffirms United States v. Wiltberger (5 Wheat. 76)
The Court leans on Chief Justice Marshall's rule against stretching penal statutes beyond their plain words.
Distinguishes Thompson v. Louisville (362 U.S. 199)
The Court says this no-evidence rule doesn't resolve the case once the statute is read as newly construed.