Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/520

 512 FBDEKAL BBPOKTEfi. �supreme court so held. The court, in deciding the case, says the fourteenth amendment "ordains that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; or deny to any person within its jurisdiotion the equal protection of the laws. What is this but declaring that the law in the statea shall be the same for the black as for the white ; that ail persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the states ; and in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color ? The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory; but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity, or right, most valuable to the colored race — the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively, as colored; exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil soeiety, lessening the security of the enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy, ; and discriminations which are steps toward reducing them to the condition of a subject race. That the West Virginia statiite respecting juries — the statute that eontrolled the selection of the grand and petit jury in the case of the plaintiff in error — is such a discrimination, ought not to be doubted, nor would it be if the personis excluded by it were white men." 10 Alb. Law Jour. 227. �In speaking of the act to enforce this amendment, the court further says: Sections 1977 and 1978 of the Kevised Statutes, before cited, "partially enumerate the rights and immunities intended to be guaranteed by the constitution;" and that "this act puts in the formof a statute what had been substantially ordained by the constitutional amendment." Id. 228. If this exclusion of colored men from sitting upon a jury by implication is a violation of the constitution, as de- nying the equal protection of the laws to colored persons, a fortiori must the express positive provisions of the constitu- tion and act of the legislature of the state of California be in conflict with that instrument, as denying the equal protection of the laws to the Chinese residents of the state. Upon reason and these authorities, then, it seems impossible to ��� �