1. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, (1886). 2. Facts: A San Franscisco law required that laundries could not be operated in other than brick or stone buildings without approval by the city. All but one of 88 non-chinese applicants were granted approval to operate in a non-stone building. However, not a single one of 200 chinese applicants had been granted approval.
Oct 15, 2016 · Then, in 1886 a Chinese immigrant named Sang Lee, who owned a laundry facility named Yick Wo, was told by San Francisco City that he couldn’t continue operating the laundry facility he had owned and operated for 20 years because of a newly passed ordinance the held “It shall be unlawful, from and after the passage of this order, for any person or persons to …
Yick Wo (Defendant) appealed a conviction for operating a laundry without permission, arguing that only whites were being granted such permission. Synopsis of Rule of Law. A valid law that is applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner is unconstitutional as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Points of Law - Legal Principles in ...
It was the first case to use the "equal protection" clause of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits states from denying any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. In a unanimous decision the Supreme Court ruled laws with discriminatory intent were unconstitutional.
Yick Wo refused to shut down his business and was arrested. He fought his case from behind bars. He took it all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court determined that the ordinance was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment's “equal protection” clause – because of the unequal application of the law.
Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), was the first case where the United States Supreme Court ruled that a law that is race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Yick Wo believed city ordinances had been unfairly applied to him, so he challenged their constitutionality under the equal protection clause, and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court.