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1961 United States Supreme Court case
Garner v. Louisiana
, 368 U.S. 157 (1961), was a
landmark
case argued by
Thurgood Marshall
before the
US Supreme Court
. On December 11, 1961, the court unanimously ruled that
Louisiana
could not convict peaceful sit-in
protesters
who refused to leave dining establishments under the state's "
disturbing the peace
" laws.
[1]
[2]
Background
[
edit
]
African-American
students from
Southern University
sat at a whites-only segregated lunch bar at Sitman's Drugstore in
Baton Rouge
,
Louisiana
. The management summoned the
police
after the students quietly remained despite being asked to relocate to another counter.
After ordering the black patrons to leave, the police arrested them, charged them with disturbing the peace, and claimed that their behavior could "foreseeably disturb or alarm the public," according to the state's "disturbing the peace" statute.
[3]
The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
defended the student demonstrators, and the
Kennedy administration
's
Justice Department
filed a legal brief on their behalf.
[4]
Decision
[
edit
]
In a 9?0 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the African-American students' favor, agreeing that the state had violated due process of law under the Fourteenth amendment, and found no evidence that the students' behavior could have foreseeably disturbed the peace.
In his written opinion, Justice
John Marshall Harlan
likened sit-in demonstrations to verbal expression as a form of free speech.
[5]
Justice
William O. Douglas
's concurring opinion stated, “For the police are supposed to be on the side of the Constitution, not on the side of discrimination. Yet if all constitutional questions are to be put aside and the problem treated merely in terms of disturbing the peace, I would have difficulty in reversing these judgments. I think, however, the constitutional questions must be reached and that they make reversal necessary.”
[6]
Garner v. Louisiana
was an important case for the
Civil Rights Movement
, and one of many civil rights cases argued before the
Warren Court
(1953?69).
Eventually, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
"outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce."
References
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External links
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