Butts v. Merchants & Miners Transportation Co.

Background

A Black woman and U.S. citizen bought first‑class tickets on a Maryland shipping company’s steamships between Boston and Norfolk. Although she held first‑class tickets, the company required her to eat at a separate table and gave her a lower‑deck stateroom while white first‑class passengers received upper‑deck rooms. She claimed twelve separate acts of discrimination and sued to recover statutory $500 penalties under Sections 1 and 2 of the 1875 Civil Rights Act. The carrier argued the law was unconstitutional, the lower court sustained that objection, and judgment was entered for the carrier, prompting this direct appeal.

Reasoning

The Court examined whether the two sections could be treated as valid in places where Congress might lawfully act (for example, on American vessels on the high seas, the District of Columbia, or U.S. Territories) even if invalid as applied to the States. Relying on past decisions, the Court said the statute is a penal criminal law written in general terms applying “within the jurisdiction of the United States.” Because the statute could not be narrowed by judicial construction without effectively rewriting it, and because its general words show Congress intended a uniform law, the Court concluded the unconstitutional portions could not be severed from the whole. Therefore the sections must fall in their entirety.

Real world impact

As a result, the woman cannot recover the penalties claimed under the 1875 statute, and others cannot rely on those sections to punish or recover for similar discrimination on American vessels or elsewhere covered by the statute’s broad language. The decision turns on the Court’s view that a penal law written in general terms cannot be judicially narrowed to save only its valid applications, so the statute is unenforceable as written.