You never know with this Supreme Court

Now Michigan wants to follow the racist footsteps of Arizona. Oklahoma is considering similar measures. When these cases reach the Supreme Court, and they will, will the Justices do the right thing just as the justices did in 1886? Yick Wo v. Hopkins involves a facially neutral law in San Francisco prohibiting laundries in wooden structures. Most of the Chinese laundries were in wooden structures. On the surface, or facially, the law was neutral because it seemed to affect all laundry owners. Below the surface however, the law was directed totally at the Chinese.

Arizona's law seems to address everyone on the surface but in reality it is the same law San Francisco passed against the Chinese laundries. We can't allow facially neutral laws in this country which do nothing but push discrimination in the dark corners because no one wants to see it.

In 1886 the Supreme Court decided just that, the law was discriminatory. Yick Wo v. Hopkins was the first instance of the Court inferring the existence of discrimination from data about a law's application, a technique that would be used again in the 1960s to strike down statutes discriminating against African Americans.

Will we do this all over again with Arizona? Will the Supreme Court once again do the right thing?

Michael Harris

in the name of love...