Yick+Wo+v.+Hopkins

=Yick Wo v. Hopkins= 118 U.S. 356 (1886)

The subject of this case was a San Francisco ordinance that mandated that any laundry be operated in a brick or stone building, except with the permission of the Board of Supervisors of the City.

Yick Wo was a Chinese immigrant, a non-citizen, who had operated a laundry in a wooden building for twenty-two years.

Nearly all of the city's 320 laundry facilities were operated in wooden buildings, and 240 were owned by Chinese nationals. About 150 Chinese nationals had been arrested for violating the ordinance, while non-Chinese laundry owners were left alone. Similarly, petition for permission from the Board of Supervisors were routinely denied when submitted by Chinese owners, and routinely granted when submitted by others.

This case stands for the proposition that even if a law is facially neutral, enforcement of the law on an unequal basis can be a violation of equal protection.

The requirement of equal protection extends beyond the legislature, to the executive operations of a state as well:

"[T]he facts shown establish an administration directed so exclusively against a particular class of persons as to warrant and require the conclusion, that, whatever may have been the intent of the ordinances as adopted, they are applied by the public authorities charged with their administration, and thus representing the State itself, with a mind so unequal and oppressive as to amount to a practical denial by the State of [equal protection]. Though the law be fair on its face and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution."