View source for Slaughter-House Cases

{{Use American English|date=September 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2023}}
{{Infobox SCOTUS case
  |Litigants=Slaughter-House Cases
  |ArgueDate=January 11
  |ArgueYear=1872
  |ReargueDateA=February 3
  |ReargueDateB=5
  |ReargueYear=1873
  |DecideDate=April 14
  |DecideYear=1873
  |FullName=The Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company;<br />Paul Esteben, L. Ruch, J. P. Rouede, W. Maylie, S. Firmberg, B. Beaubay, William Fagan, J. D. Broderick, N. Seibel, M. Lannes, J. Gitzinger, J. P. Aycock, D. Verges, The Live-Stock Dealers' and Butchers' Association of New Orleans, and Charles Cavaroc v. The State of Louisiana, ex rel. S. Belden, Attorney-General;<br />The Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company
  |USVol=83
  |USPage=36
  |ParallelCitations=16 [[John William Wallace|Wall.]] 36; 21 [[L. Ed.]] 394; 1872 [[U.S. LEXIS]] 1139
  |Prior=Error to the Supreme Court of Louisiana
  |Subsequent=
  |Holding=The Fourteenth Amendment only protects the privileges and immunities pertaining to citizenship of the United States, not those that pertain to state citizenship.
  |Majority=Miller
  |JoinMajority=Clifford, Davis, Strong, Hunt
  |Dissent=Field
  |JoinDissent=Chase, Swayne, Bradley
  |Dissent2=Swayne
  |Dissent3=Bradley
  |LawsApplied=U.S. Const. Art. IV. sec. 2, 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments}}

The '''''Slaughter-House Cases''''', 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), was a [[List of landmark court decisions in the United States|landmark]] [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] decision which ruled that the [[Privileges or Immunities Clause]] of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] to the [[United States Constitution|U.S. Constitution]] only protects the legal rights that are associated with [[Citizenship of the United States|federal U.S. citizenship]], not those that pertain to [[state citizenship]]. Though the decision in the ''Slaughter-House Cases'' minimized the impact of the Privileges or Immunities Clause on state law, the Supreme Court would later [[incorporation of the Bill of Rights|incorporate the Bill of Rights]] to strike down state laws on the basis of other clauses. In 2010, the Court rejected arguments in ''[[McDonald v. Chicago]]'' to overrule the established [[precedent]] of ''Slaughterhouse'' and decided instead to incorporate the [[Second Amendment]] via the [[Due Process Clause]] of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ostensibly seeking to improve sanitary conditions, the [[Louisiana]] legislature and the city of [[New Orleans]] had established a corporation charged with regulating the [[slaughterhouse]] industry. Members of the Butchers' Benevolent Association challenged the constitutionality of the corporation's monopoly, claiming that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The amendment had been ratified in the aftermath of the [[American Civil War]] with the primary intention of protecting civil rights of millions of newly emancipated [[freedmen]] in the [[Southern United States]], but the butchers argued that the amendment protected their right to "sustain their lives through labor".

In the majority opinion written by Associate Justice [[Samuel Freeman Miller]], the Court held to a narrower interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment than the plaintiffs urged, ruling that it did not restrict the [[police power (United States constitutional law)|police powers]] exercised by Louisiana because the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected only those rights guaranteed by the United States, not individual states. In effect, the clause was interpreted to convey limited protection pertinent to a small minority of rights, such as the right to seek federal office.

In a dissenting opinion, Associate Justice [[Stephen J. Field]] wrote that Miller's opinion effectively rendered the Fourteenth Amendment a "vain and idle enactment".

==Background==
{{multiple image
 | width = 200
 | image1 = Matthew_H._Carpenter_-_Brady-Handy.jpg
 | caption1 = [[Matthew H. Carpenter]], the lawyer who argued for Louisiana
 | image2 = JACampbell.jpg
 | caption2 = [[John Archibald Campbell]], the lawyer who argued for the butchers
 }}
One writer described [[New Orleans]] in the mid-nineteenth century as plagued by "intestines and portions of putrefied animal matter lodged [around the drinking pipes]" whenever the tide from the [[Mississippi River]] was low; the offal came from the city's slaughterhouses.<ref name=Beatty>{{cite book |last=Beatty |first=Jack |title=Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865–1900 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=U3eG_QoBRzsC&pg=PA135 |access-date=19 July 2013 |year=2008 |publisher=Vintage Books |location=New York |isbn=978-1400032426 |page=135}}</ref> A mile and a half upstream from the city, 1,000 butchers gutted more than 300,000 animals per year.<ref name=Beatty/> Animal entrails (known as [[offal]]), dung, blood, and urine contaminated New Orleans's drinking water, which was implicated in [[cholera]] and [[yellow fever]] outbreaks among the population.<ref name=Beatty/>

To try to control the problem, a New Orleans grand jury recommended that the slaughterhouses be moved south, but since many of the slaughterhouses were outside city limits, the grand jury's recommendations carried no weight. The city appealed to the state legislature. As a result, in 1869, the [[Louisiana]] legislature passed "An Act to Protect the Health of the City of New Orleans, to Locate the Stock Landings and Slaughter Houses, and to incorporate the Crescent City Livestock Landing and Slaughter-House Company", which allowed the city of New Orleans to create a [[corporation]] that centralized all [[slaughterhouse]] operations in the city.<ref name=SCOTUS_opinion>{{cite web|url=https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0083_0036_ZO.html|title=Slaughterhouse Cases|work=cornell.edu}}</ref> At the time, [[New York City]], [[San Francisco]], [[Boston]], [[Milwaukee]], and [[Philadelphia]] had similar provisions to confine butchers' establishments to particular areas in order to keep offal from contaminating the water supply.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9267|title=Can the Slaughter-House Cases Be Saved from Its Critics?|author=Pamela Brandwein|work=H-Net Reviews|date=May 2004}}</ref>

The legislature chartered a private corporation, the Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company, to run a Grand Slaughterhouse at the southern part of the city, opposite the Mississippi River.<ref name=SCOTUS_opinion/> Crescent City would not slaughter beef itself but act as a [[franchising|franchise]] corporation, by renting out space to other butchers in the city for a fee, under a designated maximum.

The statute also granted "sole and exclusive privilege of conducting and carrying on the livestock landing and slaughterhouse business within the limits and privilege granted by the act, and that all such animals shall be landed at the stock landings and slaughtered at the slaughterhouses of the company, and nowhere else. Penalties are enacted for infractions of this provision, and prices fixed for the maximum charges of the company for each steamboat and for each animal landed".<ref name=SCOTUS_opinion/> The exclusivity would last for a period of 25 years. All other slaughterhouses would be closed up, forcing butchers to slaughter within the operation set up by Crescent City. The statute forbade Crescent City from favoring one butcher over another by promising harsh penalties for refusal to sell space to any butcher. All animals on the premises would be inspected by an officer appointed by the governor of the state.

Over 400 members of the Butchers' Benevolent Association joined to sue to stop Crescent City's takeover of the slaughterhouse industry.<ref name=Beatty/> In the background of his majority opinion,<ref name=SCOTUS_opinion/> Supreme Court Justice [[Samuel Freeman Miller]] reiterated the concerns of the butchers:

{{blockquote|This statute is denounced [by the butchers] not only as creating a monopoly and conferring odious and exclusive privileges upon a small number of persons at the expense of the great body of the community of New Orleans, but it is asserted that it deprives a large and meritorious class of citizens—the whole of the butchers of the city—of the right to exercise their trade, the business to which they have been trained and on which they depend for the support of themselves and their families, and that the unrestricted exercise of the business of butchering is necessary to the daily subsistence of the population of the city.}}

The lower courts had found in favor of Crescent City in all cases.

Six cases were appealed to the Supreme Court. The butchers based their claims on the [[due process]], [[Privileges or Immunities clause|privileges or immunities]], and [[equal protection]] clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been ratified by the states five years earlier. It had been passed with the intention of protecting the civil rights of the millions of newly emancipated [[freedmen]] in the South, who had been granted citizenship in the United States.

The butchers' attorney, former Supreme Court Justice [[John Archibald Campbell]], who had retired from the federal bench because of his Confederate loyalties, represented persons in a number of cases in New Orleans to obstruct [[Radical Republicans|Radical Reconstruction]]. Although the Fourteenth Amendment was passed mainly to protect the [[freedmen]] in the South, the language of Section 1 is not racially limited. Campbell used it to argue for a new, broad reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, in order to allow butchers of any race to "sustain their lives through labor".

==Decision==
On April 14, 1873, the Supreme Court issued a 5–4 decision in favor of the slaughterhouse company upholding the constitutionality of Louisiana's use of its [[police power (United States constitutional law)|police powers]] to regulate butchers.

===Opinion of the Court===
[[File:Samuel Freeman Miller - Brady-Handy.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.875|Justice Samuel Freeman Miller, the author of the majority opinion in the ''Slaughter-House Cases'']]
Writing for the majority, Associate Justice [[Samuel Freeman Miller]] framed the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments as primarily protecting former [[Slavery in the United States|black slaves]]. Accordingly, the Supreme Court rejected the butchers' Equal Protection Clause arguments, believing that it only prohibited anti-Black discrimination. The Due Process Clause claims were also rejected by declining to consider modified labor conditions as a deprivation of property.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;6.3.2, p. 541}}

Agreeing with the [[Louisiana Supreme Court]] that the butchers' interpretation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause would turn federal courts into "a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the states," the Supreme Court described the clause as only protecting the rights of national citizenship, rather than the more expansive rights of state citizenship.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;6.3.2, pp. 541–42}}{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§&nbsp;14.3(b)}} Noting that the Fourteenth Amendment begins with the [[Citizenship Clause]] conferring national citizenship upon freed black slaves to supersede the Court's 1857 decision in ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'', Miller concluded that the amendment only focuses on the rights of national citizenship.{{sfnp|Tribe|2000|p=1304}} In identifying some of the privileges and immunities of federal citizenship, Miller relied on [[Bushrod Washington|Bushrod Washington's]] earlier listing in ''[[Corfield v. Coryell]]'' (1823) which included the [[Freedom of movement under United States law|right to travel]], seek [[Habeas corpus in the United States|habeas corpus]], and hold property in multiple states.<ref>''Slaughter-House Cases'', 83 U.S. at 80, quoted in {{harvp|Tribe|2000|p=1307}}.</ref>{{sfnp|Tribe|2000|pp=1306–07}}

While Miller's opinion is remembered as diminishing the Privileges or Immunities Clause's ability to protect the civil rights of African Americans, historians believe that he intended to protect the biracial [[Louisiana State Legislature]] from national interference.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Huebner |first=Timothy S. |title=Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism |publisher=[[University Press of Kansas]] |year=2016 |isbn=9780700624867 |pages=397-398 |chapter=Politics and the Reconstructed Constitutional Order}}</ref> Campbell had hoped to use the case to undermine the state government's legitimacy, and southern newspapers condemned the decision for strengthening the [[Reconstruction era]] state government.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Barnett |first=Randy E. |date=November 2016 |title=The Three Narratives of the Slaughter-House Cases |journal=[[Journal of Supreme Court History]] |volume=41 |issue=3 |pages=302-304}}</ref><ref name=":0" />

===Dissents===
{{multiple image
 | align = right
 | direction = horizontal
 | total_width = 500
 | image1 = Stephen Johnson Field, photo half length seated, 1875.jpg
 | image2 = Joseph Philo Bradley - Brady-Handy.jpg
 | image3 = Noah Haynes Swayne, photo, head and shoulders, seated.jpg
 | footer = Justices [[Stephen J. Field]] (left), [[Joseph P. Bradley]] (center), and [[Noah H. Swayne]] (right), the authors of the dissenting opinions in ''Slaughter-House''
}}
Four justices dissented from the Court's decision, and three of them wrote dissenting opinions.

Justice [[Stephen J. Field]] protested that Miller's narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment rendered it "a vain and idle enactment, which accomplished nothing and most unnecessarily excited Congress and the people on its passage."<ref>''Slaughter-House Cases'', 83 U.S. at 96 (Field, J., dissenting), quoted in {{harvp|Tribe|2000|p=1309}}.</ref> Field accepted Campbell's reading of the amendment as not confined to protection of freed slaves but embracing the [[common law]] presumption in favor of an individual right to pursue a legitimate occupation. Field's reading of the due process clause of the amendment would prevail in future cases in which the court read the amendment broadly to protect personal interests against hostile state laws{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}.

Justice [[Joseph P. Bradley]]'s dissent argued that the Privileges or Immunities Clause [[Incorporation of the Bill of Rights|incorporated the Bill of Rights]] against the states.{{sfnp|Tribe|2000|p=1308}} In Bradley's view, the Citizenship Clause had elevated national citizenship above state citizenship, demanding recognition of new rights against state regulation.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |title=[[The Second Founding|The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution]] |date=2019 |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |isbn=9780393652574 |pages=129-136}}</ref>

Justice [[Noah H. Swayne]]'s dissent criticized the Court's rejection of the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment and its Privileges or Immunities Clause had been intended to transform American government.{{sfnp|Tribe|2000|p=1310}} Speaking of the Court's objection that a broad reading of the Clause would make it a "perpetual censor" on state governments, Swayne said that Congress and the states had been aware of that when they adopted the Fourteenth Amendment. 
{{Blockquote
|text=It is objected that the power conferred is novel and large. The answer is that the novelty was known and the measure deliberately adopted. ... It is necessary to enable the government of the nation to secure to everyone within its jurisdiction the rights and privileges enumerated, which, according to the plainest considerations of reason and justice and the fundamental principles of the social compact, all are entitled to enjoy. Without such authority, any government claiming to be national is glaringly defective.
|source=''Slaughter-House Cases'', 83 U.S. at 129 (Swayne, J., dissenting).<ref>Quoted in part in {{harvp|Tribe|2000|p=1310}}.</ref>
}}

==Subsequent developments==
{{See also|Privileges or Immunities Clause#Interpretation after adoption}}

The victory of the Crescent City Company survived for only 11 years. By 1879, the State of Louisiana had adopted a new constitution prohibiting the state's ability to grant slaughterhouse monopolies, devolving regulation of cattle slaughter to parishes and municipalities, and banning the subordinate governmental units from granting monopoly rights over such activities. Having essentially lost its monopoly protection, the Crescent City Co. sued. That case ended in ''Butchers' Union Co. v. Crescent City Co.'' (1884),<ref>{{ussc|111|746|1884}}</ref> with the Supreme Court holding that Crescent City Co. did not have a contract with the state and so that revocation of the monopoly privilege was not a violation of the [[Contract Clause]].

==Analysis==
The ''Slaughter-House Cases'' essentially "gutted" the Privileges or Immunities Clause.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Tribe|first=Laurence H.|date=1995|title=Taking Text and Structure Seriously: Reflections on Free-Form Method in Constitutional Interpretation|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1341856|journal=Harvard Law Review|volume=108|issue=6|pages=1221–1303|doi=10.2307/1341856|jstor=1341856|issn=0017-811X|url-access=subscription}}</ref> The American scholar [[Edward Samuel Corwin]] remarked: "Unique among constitutional provisions, the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enjoys the distinction of having been rendered a practical nullity by a single decision of the Supreme Court rendered within five years after its ratification."<ref>Edward S. Corwin, ed., (1953) ''The Constitution of the United States of America'', Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, p. 965, cited in {{harvp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§ 6.3.2, pp. 542–43}}</ref>

The Supreme Court has used the Privileges or Immunities Clause to declare a law unconstitutional only one time in the modern era, in the 1999 case ''[[Saenz v. Roe]]'' where it examined a California law barring new state residents from receiving welfare benefits. While he dissented, Justice [[Clarence Thomas]] nevertheless took the opportunity to criticize the ''Slaughter-House Cases'', stating, "Legal scholars agree on little beyond the conclusion that the Clause does not mean what the Court said it meant in 1873." Thomas later expanded on his view of the Clause, at least as it relates to incorporating the Bill of Rights against the States, in ''McDonald v. Chicago''. In 2001, the American legal scholar [[Akhil Reed Amar]] similarly wrote of the ''Slaughter-House Cases'': "Virtually no serious modern scholar—left, right, and center—thinks that the decision is a plausible reading of the [Fourteenth] Amendment."{{sfnp|Amar|2001|p=631, note 178}} This view was echoed by historian [[Eric Foner]], who wrote "[T]he Court's ... studied distinction between the privileges deriving from state and national citizenship should have been seriously doubted by anyone who read the Congressional debates of the 1860s".<ref>[[Eric Foner|Foner, Eric]] (2014) [1988] ''[[Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877]]'' pp.528-529. New York: Harper Perennial. {{isbn|978-0-06-235451-8}}</ref>

[[Kevin Gutzman]], an American constitutional scholar and historian, argues that the Fourteenth Amendment was originally meant to protect only "specifically federal rights" and describes the later, broader interpretation of the Amendment as "the Court's [use of] the Fourteenth Amendment to claim a capacious national judicial authority". Gutzman believes that "legal academics despise the ''Slaughterhouse'' decision because they ''do'' think the federal courts should be 'a perpetual censor upon all legislation in the States{{'"}}.<ref>{{cite book |last= Gutzman |first= Kevin R. C. |title= The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution |location= Washington, D.C. |publisher= [[Regnery Publishing]] |year= 2007 |pages= 134–137}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Chase Court]]

==References==
'''Notes'''
{{reflist}}

'''Bibliography'''
* {{Cite journal|last=Amar|first=Akhil|date=2001|title=Substance and Method in the Year 2000|url=https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&context=plr|journal=Pepperdine Law Review|volume=28|issue=3|pages=601–32}}
* {{cite book |first=Erwin |last=Chemerinsky |title=Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies |edition=6th |location=New York |publisher=[[Wolters Kluwer]] |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-4548-9574-9}}
*{{cite book |last1= Lurie |first1= Jonathan |last2= Labbe |first2= Ronald |name-list-style= amp |title= Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment |location= Wichita |publisher= University Press of Kansas |year= 2003 |isbn= 0-7006-1290-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Nowak |first1=John E. |last2=Rotunda |first2=Ronald D. |title=Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure |location=Eagan, MN |publisher=West Thomson/Reuters |year=2012 |edition=5th |oclc=798148265 }}
* {{cite book | last = Tribe | first = Laurence H. | author-link=Laurence Tribe | title = American Constitutional Law | location = New York | publisher = Foundation Press | year = 2000 | edition = 3rd | isbn = 978-1-56662-714-6 }}

==External links==
*{{wikisource-inline|list=
**[[s:Slaughter-House Cases|''Slaughter-House Cases'']], text of 83 U.S. 36 (1873)
**{{Cite Americana|wstitle=Slaughter-House Cases|short=x |noicon=x}}
}}
*{{caselaw source
 |case=''Slaughter-House Cases'', {{ussc|83|36|1873|Wall.|16|el=no}}
 | cornell =
 | courtlistener =
 | findlaw=https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/83/36.html
 | justia=http://supreme.justia.com/us/83/36/case.html
 | loc =http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep083/usrep083036/usrep083036.pdf
 | openjurist =https://openjurist.org/83/us/36
 | googlescholar = https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12565118578780815007
}}
*[http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9267 Can the ''Slaughter-House Cases'' Be Saved from Its Critics?&nbsp;– Pamela Brandwein (University of Texas at Dallas)]
*[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_slaughterhouse.html ''Slaughterhouse Cases''&nbsp;– PBS.com]
* [http://landmarkcases.c-span.org/Case/3/The-Slaughterhouse-Cases "Supreme Court Landmark Case, ''Slaughterhouse Cases''"] from [[C-SPAN]]'s ''[[Landmark Cases: Historic Supreme Court Decisions]]''

{{US14thAmendment}}
{{Reconstruction Era}}

[[Category:1870s in the environment]]
[[Category:1873 in United States case law]]
[[Category:1873 in Louisiana]]
[[Category:History of civil rights in the United States]]
[[Category:Water supply and sanitation in the United States]]
[[Category:Health in Louisiana]]
[[Category:Legal history of Louisiana]]
[[Category:Economy of New Orleans]]
[[Category:19th century in New Orleans]]
[[Category:Privileges or Immunities case law]]
[[Category:United States equal protection case law]]
[[Category:United States substantive due process case law]]
[[Category:United States Thirteenth Amendment case law]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Chase Court]]
[[Category:Meat processing in the United States]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases]]