Yick Wo V. Hopkins: 1886Great American Trials
COPYRIGHT 2002 Thomson LearningYick Wo v. Hopkins: 1886Appellant: Yick Wo
Defendant: Sheriff Peter Hopkins, San Francisco, California
Appellant Claim: That San Francisco was enforcing an ordinance in an unlawfully discriminatory manner against the defendant and other Chinese persons
Chief Defense Lawyers: Alfred Clarke and H. G. Sieberst
Chief Lawyers for Appellant: Hall McAllister, D.L. Smoot, and L.H. Van Schaick
Justices: Samuel Blatchford, Joseph P. Bradley, Stephen J. Field, Horace Gray, John Marshall Harlan, Stanley Matthews, Samuel F. Miller, Morrison Waite, and William B. Woods
Place: Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision: May 10, 1886
Decision: That Yick Wo's conviction for violating the ordinance was unconstitutional
SIGNIFICANCE: In Yick Wo, the Supreme Court proclaimed that even if a law was nondiscriminatory, enforcing the law in a discriminatory manner was unconstitutional