Why The US Supreme Court Can’t Be Trusted Left Alone
SCOTUS Anti–Federal Citizenship Drift Chain
| Year | Case | What SCOTUS Did | Fed Citz Argument |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1873 | The Slaughter-House Cases | Narrowed the 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, limiting it mostly to rights of national citizenship rather than broad civil rights protection. | First major judicial “choking” of 14th Amendment federal citizenship power. |
| 1876 | United States v. Cruikshank | Limited federal power to punish private racial violence after the Colfax Massacre; said the 14th Amendment restrains states, not private actors. | Left Fed Citz dependent on hostile local/state systems for protection. |
| 1876 | United States v. Reese | Narrowed federal voting-rights enforcement under the 15th Amendment; held the 15th did not itself grant suffrage, only barred racial discrimination in voting. | Weakened federal protection of Black voting power soon after Reconstruction. |
| 1883 | United States v. Harris | Struck down federal anti-Klan enforcement against private conspiracies; held the 14th Amendment only authorized action against state conduct. | Further stripped federal defense against organized racial terror. |
| 1883 | The Civil Rights Cases | Struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875; held Congress could not ban private discrimination in public accommodations under the 13th/14th Amendments. | Removed national protection in hotels, theaters, railroads, public life. |
| 1896 | Plessy v. Ferguson | Upheld state-enforced segregation under “separate but equal.” | Constitutionalized Jim Crow against the very people Reconstruction was meant to protect. |
| 1898 | Williams v. Mississippi | Upheld Mississippi voting rules such as literacy tests and poll-tax structures because they were facially race-neutral. | Allowed “legal-looking” tools to destroy Black voting power. |
| 1906 | Hodges v. United States | Reversed convictions of white men who intimidated Black workers; narrowly read the 13th Amendment and left remedy to state courts. | Denied federal protection against economic racial coercion tied to slavery’s badges and incidents. |
From Slaughter-House forward, SCOTUS repeatedly narrowed the Reconstruction Amendments and weakened Congress’s power to protect the very people federal citizenship was created to secure. The pattern was not one single blow, but a chain: first the Court weakened the meaning of federal citizenship, then weakened federal protection from violence, then weakened voting protection, then weakened public-accommodation protection, then approved segregation, then allowed “race-neutral” tricks to gut Black political power.
In street terms:
The Court did not always openly deny Fed Citz.
It often did something more dangerous:
it kept the words of citizenship while draining the power out of them.