Also known as: 13th Amendment · Thirteenth Amend. · Amendment XIII
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The constitutional amendment ratified in 1865 that abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States. The amendment contains an enforcement clause that empowers Congress to enact legislation eliminating badges and incidents of slavery, including private racial discrimination in the sale or rental of property.
Tobias Thomas, a Black engineer, offered the highest bid on a home in a subdivision developed by Torchlight Media. The developer refused to sell solely because Thomas is Black. A federal statute enacted under the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits the refusal. The statute supplies a valid cause of action because Congress may reach purely private racial discrimination in property transactions.
Tyler Taylor, a Black customer, entered a restaurant operated by Topaz Mining and was refused service because of his race. A federal civil rights statute reaches the refusal. The statute is a valid exercise of congressional power even though the restaurant is a purely private business.
Sandra Adickes, a white school teacher from New York, was working as a volunteer teacher at a Freedom School for Negro children in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, during the summer of 1964. On August 14, 1964, Adickes went with six of her Negro students to the Hattiesburg Public Library, where the librarian refused to allow the students to use the library and summoned the chief of police, who ordered the group to leave. The group then went to the S. H. Kress & Co. store in Hattiesburg to have lunch. Adickes filed suit against Kress in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. After the group sat down at the lunch counter, a policeman entered the store and observed them. A waitress took the orders of the Negro students but refused to serve Adickes on the ground that she was a white person in the company of Negroes. The group left the store without being served. As they reached the sidewalk, the same policeman arrested Adickes on a vagrancy charge. The vagrancy charge against Adickes was subsequently changed, and she was tried and acquitted. Her complaint contained two counts under § 1983. One count alleged that Kress had refused her service pursuant to a custom of the community to segregate the races in public eating places that was enforced by the State. The other count alleged that the refusal of service and the arrest were the product of a conspiracy between Kress employees and the Hattiesburg police. Kress moved for summary judgment on the conspiracy count and submitted depositions from the store manager, the waitress, and the arresting officers, along with affidavits from police officials, all denying any agreement or communication with the police about refusing service or making the arrest. Adickes opposed the motion by pointing to her deposition statement and an unsworn statement from a Kress employee indicating that a policeman had been in the store at the time of the refusal. The District Court granted summary judgment on the conspiracy count, holding that Adickes had failed to allege facts from which a conspiracy might be inferred. After a trial on the custom count, the District Court directed a verdict for Kress because Adickes had not proved other instances of whites being refused service while in the company of Negroes. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the District Court's rulings on both counts. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.
View caseTanya Tang, a Black traveler, was turned away from a privately owned motel because of her race. A federal statute bars the denial. The statute rests on the Thirteenth Amendment enforcement power and applies to the private motel without any requirement of state action.
The appellant, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc., owns and operates a 216-room motel located on Courtland Street in Atlanta, Georgia, two blocks from downtown Peachtree Street. The motel is readily accessible to interstate highways 75 and 85 and state highways 23 and 41. It solicits patronage from outside Georgia through national advertising media, maintains over 50 billboards and highway signs, accepts convention trade from outside the state, and approximately 75 percent of its registered guests are from out of state. The motel provides lodging to transient guests along with restaurant facilities and prior to the Act had followed a practice of refusing to rent rooms to Negroes. The United States filed suit against the appellant in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia under Sections 206(a) and 206(b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint alleged that the appellant was operating a motel in which it refused to accept Negro guests solely because of their race. The appellant offered no evidence at trial, submitting the case on the pleadings, admissions, and stipulation of facts, though the appellees proved the refusal to accept Negro transients after passage of the Act. The District Court granted the government's motion for summary judgment and issued a permanent injunction restraining the appellant from continuing its discriminatory practices, citing 231 F. Supp. 393. The case reached the Supreme Court on direct appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1252. The motel is located at the intersection of two major interstate highways and advertises in national magazines and on billboards directed at interstate travelers. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2, 1964, following extensive hearings before Senate and House committees on bills including S. 1732 and H.R. 7152. The Act's Title II, set forth in 42 U.S.C. § 2000a et seq., provides that all persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin. The appellant admitted that 75 percent of its guests come from out of state. The motel's policy of refusing to rent rooms to Negroes has the effect of impeding interstate travel by Negro citizens.
View caseTabitha Taylor, a Black resident, challenged a city ordinance that effectively prevented her from keeping a handgun in her home for self-defense. The ordinance is subject to incorporation analysis under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment supplies historical context for the rights protected against state infringement.
In 2008, the Supreme Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller. The Court held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. It struck down a District of Columbia law that banned handgun possession in the home. Chicago and the village of Oak Park maintained laws effectively banning handgun possession by almost all private citizens. Chicago's Municipal Code required a valid registration certificate for any firearm. It prohibited registration of most handguns. Oak Park made it unlawful to possess any firearm, including pistols, revolvers, and other handguns. Otis McDonald, Adam Orlov, Colleen Lawson, and David Lawson were Chicago residents. Along with the National Rifle Association and two Oak Park residents, they filed federal suits challenging these ordinances after the Heller decision. Chicago enacted its handgun ban in 1982 to protect residents from loss of property and injury or death from firearms. The petitioners argued that the bans left them vulnerable to criminals. They pointed to Chicago Police Department statistics showing that the city's handgun murder rate had increased since the ban. Chicago residents faced one of the highest murder rates in the country along with elevated rates of other violent crimes. Several petitioners had personal experiences with threats and violence. Otis McDonald, in his late seventies and living in a high-crime neighborhood, faced violent threats from drug dealers because of his community activism with alternative policing strategies. Colleen Lawson's home had been targeted by burglars. She believed possessing a handgun would decrease her chances of serious injury or death if threatened again. The Chicago petitioners and two groups filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. They sought a declaration that the handgun ban and related ordinances violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. A separate action challenged the Oak Park law. A third action also challenged the Chicago ordinances. All three cases were assigned to the same district judge. The District Court rejected the claims. It noted that the Seventh Circuit had upheld a handgun ban a quarter century earlier. It also noted that Heller had refrained from addressing whether the Second Amendment applied to the States. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. It relied on three nineteenth-century cases—United States v. Cruikshank, Presser v. Illinois, and Miller v. Texas—that had been decided after the Slaughter-House Cases. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseThomas Thompson, a white employee, was discharged by Trinity Pharmaceuticals while Black employees who engaged in the same conduct were retained. A federal statute reaches the discharge. The statute applies to racial discrimination against white persons as well as Black persons.
On September 26, 1970, petitioners L. N. McDonald and Raymond L. Laird, both white, and Charles Jackson, a black employee of Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co., were jointly and severally charged with misappropriating sixty one-gallon cans of antifreeze from a shipment the company was carrying for a customer. Six days later Santa Fe fired McDonald and Laird while retaining Jackson. A grievance was promptly filed with International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 988 under the collective-bargaining agreement between the union and the company, but the grievance proceedings secured no relief. In April 1971 McDonald and Laird filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that Santa Fe had discriminated against them on the basis of race in their discharge and that Local 988 had discriminated against McDonald on the basis of race by failing to represent his interests properly in the grievance proceedings. The EEOC notified them in July 1971 of their right to initiate a civil action in district court within thirty days. McDonald and Laird then filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas joining claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Respondents moved to dismiss the complaint. In June 1974 the District Court issued a final modified opinion and order dismissing the claims under both Title VII and § 1981. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal per curiam. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseTonya Takahashi, a wheelchair user, was denied meaningful access to a state courthouse because of physical barriers. A federal statute requires the state to provide access. The statute is a valid exercise of congressional power under the enforcement clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which shares structural features with the Thirteenth Amendment enforcement power.
In August 1998, respondents George Lane and Beverly Jones filed this action against the State of Tennessee and several Tennessee counties. They alleged past and ongoing violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Both respondents are paraplegics who use wheelchairs for mobility. They claimed that they were denied access to and the services of the state court system by reason of their disabilities. Lane alleged that he was compelled to appear to answer a set of criminal charges on the second floor of a county courthouse that had no elevator. At his first appearance, Lane crawled up two flights of stairs to get to the courtroom. When Lane returned to the courthouse for a hearing, he refused to crawl again or to be carried by officers to the courtroom. He consequently was arrested and jailed for failure to appear. Jones, a certified court reporter, alleged that she has not been able to gain access to several county courthouses. As a result, she has lost both work and an opportunity to participate in the judicial process. Respondents sought damages and equitable relief. The State moved to dismiss the suit on the ground that it was barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The District Court denied the motion without opinion, and the State appealed. The United States intervened to defend Title II's abrogation of the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity. On April 28, 2000, after the appeal had been briefed and argued, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit entered an order holding the case in abeyance pending the Supreme Court's decision in Board of Trustees of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett. In Garrett, the Supreme Court concluded that the Eleventh Amendment bars private suits seeking money damages for state violations of Title I of the ADA. It left open the question whether the Eleventh Amendment permits suits for money damages under Title II. Following the Garrett decision, the Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, heard argument in a Title II suit brought by a hearing-impaired litigant. The litigant sought money damages for the State's failure to accommodate his disability in a child custody proceeding. A divided court permitted the suit to proceed despite the State's assertion of Eleventh Amendment immunity. Following the en banc decision in Popovich, a panel of the Court of Appeals entered an order affirming the District Court's denial of the State's motion to dismiss in this case. The order explained that respondents' claims were not barred because they were based on due process principles. In response to a petition for rehearing arguing that Popovich was not controlling because the complaint did not allege due process violations, the panel filed an amended opinion. It explained that the Due Process Clause protects the right of access to the courts. It also explained that the evidence before Congress when it enacted Title II established that physical barriers in government buildings, including courthouses and in the courtrooms themselves, have had the effect of denying disabled people the opportunity to access vital services and to exercise fundamental rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause. The panel did not, however, categorically reject the State's submission. It instead noted that the case presented difficult questions that cannot be clarified absent a factual record, and remanded for further proceedings. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and now reviews the case.
View caseYes. Congress may prohibit private racial discrimination in the sale or rental of property as a badge or incident of slavery under its enforcement power. The amendment contains no state-action requirement, so legislation may target private sellers and landlords directly.
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Congress may rationally determine that private racial discrimination in property transactions, school admissions, and employment constitutes a badge or incident of slavery. Federal statutes addressing such conduct are valid exercises of enforcement power even when directed at purely private actors.
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No. Involuntary servitude requires the use or threatened use of physical injury, restraint, or legal coercion. Psychological coercion by itself is generally insufficient to support a claim.
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The Thirteenth Amendment enforcement power reaches purely private conduct when Congress targets badges or incidents of slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power is generally limited to remedying state action that violates equal protection or due process.
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