United States v. Guest

United States v. Guest 383 U.S. 745 (1966)

In an opinion authored by Justice Potter Stewart, the court extended the protection of the 14th Amendment to citizens who suffer rights deprivations at the hands of private conspiracies, where there is minimal state participation in the conspiracy.

"There now can be no doubt that the specific language of §5 empowers the Congress to enact laws punishing all conspiracies - with or without state action - that interfere with 14th Amendment rights," wrote Justice Tom C. Clark in a concurring opinion. Justice Hugo Black and Justice Abe Fortas joined Clark's concurrence. Both opinions assume generally that 14th amendment rights are rights against the states, according to Stanford University Prof. Kathleen Sullivan's textbook Constitutional Law, 16th Edition.

History

The case arose out of the killing of Lemuel Penn, an African-American reserve officer who was returning from active duty to Washington, D.C., where he was a school teacher. He was travelling north with several friends in a car when he was shot on a bridge, just nine days after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed.

The murder happened in Madison, Georgia, and the alleged killers were charged but acquitted there by an all-white jury. The federal indictment in question arose after the acquittal. In District Court, the six defendants successfully "moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that it did not charge an offense under the laws of the United States," according to the case. The Supreme Court reversed.

The argument revolved around whether or not Congress intended to apply equal protection rights of the 14th Amendment to citizens deprived of said rights on public facilities - ie roads and bridges or interstate commerce facilities - by private actors with the collusion of public actors, in this case police who responded to the murderers false reports that Penn and his cohorts had committed crimes.

Concurrence and Dissenters

The question was whether or not 18 U.S.C. §241 of the Criminal Code could be applied to protect the rights of equal protection and due process secured by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Justice William Brennan, Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William O. Douglas concurred in part and dissented in part.

Brennan wrote: "(I) believe that §241 reaches such a private conspiracy, not because the 14th Amendment of its own force prohibits such a conspiracy, but because §241, as an exercise of congressional power under §5 of that Amendment, prohibits all conspiracies to interfere with the exercise of a 'right (secured) by the Constitution.'"

ee also

*List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 383