San Francisco leaders commemorate landmark Yick Wo case that shaped U.S. civil rights movement
On Monday, a group of city leaders met at a street corner in San Francisco to commemorate an 1886 landmark Supreme Court ruling that established the foundation of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
It's a little-known piece of AAPI history outside of legal circles, but it's at the center of the political struggles in the nation today.
On Monday afternoon, a commemoration was held at the corner of Third and Harrison Streets, which is now just a parking lot. But almost exactly 140 years ago, there was a Chinese laundry at that location called Yick Wo that ran afoul of local ordinances and changed America as a result.
Following the Gold Rush, the laundry business was taken over by the Chinese immigrant community. But David Lei, a board member of the Chinese Historical Society of America, said the laundry businesses couldn't just operate in Chinatown.
"As is true today, you have to be in the neighborhood," he said, "so the Chinese were scattered all over."
That angered the white populace. So, in 1886, the city had passed a law that said that no one could operate a laundry made of wood without a permit. On its face, it looked like a public safety issue.
"So, 320 laundries immediately applied for this application," said Lei. "One hundred got their permits. Two hundred and twenty were rejected."
The 100 were all White, the 220 were all Chinese. So, the owner of Yick Wo, a man named Lee Yick, refused to pay a $10 fine for operating without a permit and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite the rampant racism of the day, the justices ruled on May 10, 1886, that the law violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause based not on what it said, but how it was being administered.
The ruling also confirmed that protection extended to everyone, regardless of citizenship.
Before he retired in 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke with a group of law students about the historical meaning of the Yick Wo ruling.
"It says that even though the law is neutral on its face, if in application it's being applied in order to hurt a particular race, it's void," said Justice Kennedy. "That's a tremendously powerful principle, and that's why the Yick Wo case is cited today."
In fact, the ruling became the basis for most of the legal challenges of the civil rights movement, culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But Professor Matthew Coles at UC Law, San Francisco, said the very premise of the landmark Yick Wo ruling is now being threatened.
"The Supreme Court, at least at that point, had the good sense to understand that you don't just look for statements of intent. You look for results," said Prof. Coles. "And the results here seemed very, very clear. If you were Chinese, you couldn't run a laundry. If you weren't, you could. The most important thing it established was that you don't need a smoking gun to prove discrimination. You can look at the results. What makes this moment, I think, particularly poignant is the Supreme Court just decided in a voting rights case that you can't prove a violation of the Voting Rights Act unless you can prove intent."
As a result of the Court's April 29 ruling, states across the nation are now rushing to redistrict their voting maps, being careful not to state what the real intent may be.
"So, immediately, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, all decided that they're going to redraw their Congressional districts," said Prof. Coles. "You know, it doesn't take a genius to see what's going on. They're going to get rid of the districts that have been electing Black people to Congress."
The Yick Wo case may be 140 years old, but Prof. Coles said the argument behind it still rings true in 2026.
"And I think what it tells us is, in the late 19th century, the Supreme Court seemed to understand discrimination, and the way it works, a lot better than our Supreme Court does today."
