Slaughter-House+Cases

=The Slaughter-House Cases = [|83 U.S. 36 (1873)]

 At issue in //The Slaughter-House Cases// was the Louisiana legislature's grant of a monopoly for New Orleans slaughterhouse work, for twenty-five years, to one particular slaughterhouse. The law required the company to allow anyone to slaughter livestock on payment of a fixed fee.

 Local butchers challenged the law on several grounds:
 * The law imposed involuntary servitude, in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment
 * The law was a violation the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
 * The law was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
 * The law denied the plaintiff butchers' right to practice their trade, violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

In considering the case, the justices recognized their decision's potentially far-reaching consequences; the decision was not made lightly.

The Court read the Thirteenth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause very narrowly: these provisions were set out only to protect former slaves. As this was the framers' intent after the Civil War, these provisions could only be applied for African Americans' protection.

Similarly, the Court held—with no elaboration—that Louisiana's grant of a monopoly was not a deprivation of property in violation of Due Process, even though it was a restraint on the practice of a trade.

All of this reasoning has since been overruled and buried by later rulings of the Court. The Equal Protection Clause has now been applied expansively to cover discrimination in gender, alienage, and legitimacy of children. Under the Due Process Clause, the right to practice a trade or profession is now protected. Also protected are the right to marry, the right to have custody of children, the right to use contraceptives, and the right to abortion.

The portion of the opinion that is still good law, however, is the Court's analysis under the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Here, the Court held that the Clause affords individuals no protection from state laws. The result of this reasoning is that the Bill of Rights may not be applied to states by way of the Privileges and Immunities Clause.

Though the Court read the Equal Protection Clause restrictively and refused to extend it beyond protection of African Americans, it still afforded some clear insight to the purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments. It articulated the purpose of the post-war Amendments: "the freedom of the slave race [and] the protection of the newly-made freedman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him."