Chew Heong v. United States

Federal Trials and Great Debates 

in United States History

Case Summary:

• Chew Heong was a Chinese laborer who lived in the U.S. but travelled abroad in 1881.

• While he was away, Congress changed the law to require a certificate to reenter the U.S.

• In 1884, Chew Heong was denied reentry and sued for a writ of habeas corpus. 

• A divided circuit court upheld Chew Heong’s exclusion, but the Supreme Court reversed the 

decision.

History of the Case:

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Congress passed several laws designed to 

prohibit Chinese people from entering the United States. These laws were based on racist notions about 

Chinese people’s ability to join and contribute to mainstream American society and on concerns that the 

new immigrants would take jobs previously performed by whites (many Chinese immigrants worked as 

railroad or agricultural workers during this period). An 1882 act excluded Chinese laborers from the 

United States for ten years but permitted those who had been in the United States prior to an 1880 treaty 

with China to come and go as before. The act required that, prior to leaving the United States, laborers 

obtain a “return” certificate and present the document to authorities on their return. Anti-Chinese 

advocates argued that, despite the law’s seemingly strict exclusion measures, too many Chinese laborers 

were still entering the United States and, in 1884, Congress amended the act to state that these 

certificates were the only acceptable evidence of a Chinese person’s right to return to the United States.

Chew Heong v. United States (1884) involved a challenge to this legal framework. Chew Heong 

had worked as a laborer in California prior to the 1880 treaty, but travelled to Hawaii, which was then a 

sovereign nation, in 1881. In 1884, he attempted to return to California, but was denied entry because he 

did not have the necessary paperwork. Though Chew Heong claimed he could prove that he had 

previously been a legal U.S. resident, he did not have a return certificate because he had left the United 

States before the government began issuing such documents. Though this problem may seem like a 

minor technical issue, Chew Heong’s case had important implications. Between 12,000 and 15,000 other 

Chinese laborers had left the country before the certificates were issued and all would likely be denied 

reentry if the courts ruled against him.

Many Chinese immigrants refused entry into the United States turned to the federal courts to 

challenge their exclusion. The most common vehicle for exclusion challenges, and the one employed in 

Chew Heong’s case, was a writ of habeas corpus. This longstanding and flexible legal instrument 

compelled authorities in custody of an individual to bring him or her before the court (the Latin name of 

the writ is often translated as “you have the body”) and explain the legal rationale for the detention. If that 

rationale is unsatisfactory, the courts may order the individual’s release. Since authorities typically had to 

detain individuals before deporting them, this mechanism proved useful for Chinese immigrants

questioning their exclusion from the United States.

Unusually, Chew Heong’s case was heard by a four-judge panel in the U.S. Circuit Court for the 

District of California. Disbanded since 1912, the circuit courts were the primary federal trial venues at the 

time. Typically these courts were presided over by a circuit judge and a U.S. Supreme Court justice 

“riding circuit.” In this instance, however, two district judges – one from California and the other from 

Nevada – who were familiar with the intricacies of Chinese exclusion laws, sat in on the case as 

“consulting judges.” The panel divided over the issues presented by Chew Heong’s case. Justice Stephen 

Field, who had previously come under fire for ruling that Chinese immigrants had to be allowed to prove 

their right to enter the United States even if they did not have a return certificate under the 1882 act, 

believed that Congress had unambiguously expressed a desire to stop that process when it amended the 
law in 1884. If Chinese laborers like Chew Heong felt this result was unduly harsh, he argued, they 

should complain through diplomatic channels rather than the federal courts. The remaining three judges, 

however, reasoned that Chew Heong had to be permitted to prove his right to enter the United States in 

the interests of fairness and maintain the nation’s obligations under treaties with China. As the presiding 

judge, Justice Field’s opinion superseded the dissenting views of his colleagues.1

On appeal, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed Justice Field’s decision. In 

interpreting a statute like the Chinese exclusion acts, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for the Court, 

judges had to assume that Congress was attempting to honor its treaty obligations in good faith. The 

1880 treaty with China provided that Congress could restrict, but not completely ban, the immigration of 

Chinese laborers and explicitly protected the rights of Chinese then residing in America. The Court had to 

interpret the Act to achieve those goals. The effect of requiring a document from Chew Heong that would 

have been impossible for him to acquire before he left was to deny him the rights protected by the treaty. 

Justices Field and Bradley dissented from the opinion. Field’s opinion reiterated many of the 

points he had made at the circuit court level, but also engaged in a detailed discussion of the problem he 

felt Chinese laborers posed for the nation. Relying in part on racial and cultural stereotypes, Field argued 

that the Chinese competed unfairly with white American workers because they were willing to work for 

less money. He also suggested that the contract labor system under which many Chinese laborers were 

employed was tantamount to slavery and argued that China had failed to extend the privileges it promised 

to U.S. citizens in that country. Finally, he reiterated the notion that Chinese-Americans were unable to 

assimilate into mainstream American culture. Though arguably more limited in scope, Bradley’s opinion 

likewise resorted to racial stereotypes, arguing that “Chinese of the lower class have little regard for the 

solemnity of an oath” and thus could not be relied upon to produce genuine proof that they had been legal 

residents permitted to return in the absence of the return certificates. 

The overtly anti-Chinese rhetoric employed by justices Field and Bradley may surprise modern 

readers accustomed to judges who take pains to avoid disparaging groups based on race or ethnicity. 

These attitudes, however, were widely-shared outside the courtroom. Though Chew Heong’s victory in 

the case enabled many Chinese laborers to return to the United States, it did not stem this tide of antiChinese sentiment. In 1888, Congress passed an even more severe restriction on Chinese immigration,

and the laws of many states continued to discriminate against the Chinese and other Asian groups long 

into the twentieth century. Similarly, many of the federal anti-Chinese immigration and naturalization 

policies remained in place until World War II.

Legal Issues:

• Was Chew Heong required to produce a certificate of return to reenter the United States?

• Did the exclusion acts overturn the provisions of the earlier treaty protecting the privileges of 

Chinese laborers in the United States?

Questions for Discussion:

• Immigration policy has been a major legal and political issue for much of the nation’s history. Why 

was this issue so important? Why might Chinese immigrants prove more vulnerable to political 

attacks than other groups?

• Most Chinese immigrants challenging their exclusion did so through the courts rather than by 

pursuing the political solutions Justice Field recommended. Why might unpopular minorities 

prefer to press their claims in courts? What does this indicate about the role of the courts in 

American history?

 1 The case report notes that the consulting judges concurred with the dissenting opinion. That Justice Field’s opinion prevailed, 

however, suggests that the case was treated as a 1-1 tie.