Source: https://openjurist.org/384/us/808
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 05:45:16+00:00

Document:
Willie PEACOCK et al. Willie PEACOCK et al., Petitioners, v. The CITY OF GREENWOOD, MISSISSIPPI.
In the second case, 15 people allegedly affiliated with a civil rights group were arrested at different times in July and August of 1964 and charged with various offenses against the laws of Mississippi or ordinances of the City of Greenwood.5 These defendants filed essentially identical petitions for removal in the District Court, denying that they had engaged in any conduct prohibited by valid laws and stating that their arrests and prosecutions were for the 'sole purpose and effect of harassing Petitioners and of punishing them for and deterring them from the exercise of their constitutionally protected right to protest the conditions of racial discrimination and segregation' in Mississippi. As grounds for removal, the defendants specifically invoked 28 U.S.C. §§ 1443(1)6 and 1443(2).7 The District Court held that the cases had been improperly removed and remanded them to the police court of the City of Greenwood. In a per curiam opinion finding the issues 'identical with' those determined in the Peacock case, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded the cases to the District Court for a hearing on the truth of the defendants' allegations under § 1443(1). Weathers v. City of Greenwood, 347 F.2d 986.
We granted certiorari to consider the important questions raised by the parties concerning the scope of the civil rights removal statute. 382 U.S. 971, 86 S.Ct. 532, 15 L.Ed.2d 464.8 As in State of Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 86 S.Ct. 1783, we deal here not with questions of congressional power, but with issues of statutory construction.
The statutory phrase 'officer * * * or other person' characterizing the removal defendants in § 3 of the 1866 Act was carried forward without change through successive revisions of the removal statute until 1948, when the revisers, disavowing any substantive change, eliminated the phrase entirely.10 The definition of the persons entitled to removal under the present form of the statute is therefore appropriately to be read in the light of the more expansive language of the statute's ancestor. See Madruga v. Superior Court, 346 U.S. 556, 560, n. 12, 74 S.Ct. 298, 300, 98 l.Ed. 290; Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., 353 U.S. 222, 227—228, 77 S.Ct. 787, 790—791, 1 L.Ed.2d 786.
The derivation of the statutory phrase 'For any act' in § 1443(2) confirms the interpretation that removal under this subsection is limited to federal officers and those acting under them. The phrase 'For any act' was substituted in 1948 for the phrase 'for any arrest or imprisonment or other trespasses or wrongs.' Like the 'officer * * * or other person' provision, the language specifying the acts on which removal could be grounded had, with minor changes, persisted until 1948 in the civil rights removal statute since its original introduction in the 1866 Act. The language of the original Civil Rights Act—' arrest or imprisonment, trespasses, or wrongs'—is pre-eminently the language of enforcement. The words themselves denote the very sorts of activity for which federal officers, seeking to enforce the broad guarantees of the 1866 Act, were likely to be prosecuted in the state courts. As the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has put it, "Arrest or imprisonment, trespasses, or wrongs,' were precisely the probable charges against enforcement officers and those assisting them; and a statute speaking of such acts 'done or committed by virtue of or under color of authority derived from' specified laws reads far more readily on persons engaged in some sort of enforcement than on those whose rights were being enforced * * *.' People of State of New York v. Galamison, 342 F.2d 255, 262.
For these reasons, we hold that the second subsection of § 1443 confers a privilege of removal only upon federal officers or agents and those authorized to act with or for them in affirmatively executing duties under any federal law providing for equal civil rights.22 Accordingly, the individual petitioners in the case before us had no right of removal to the federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1443(2).
We come, then, to the issues which this case raises as to the scope of 28 U.S.C. § 1443(1). In State of Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 86 S.Ct. 1783 decided today, we have held that removal of a state court trespass prosecution can be had under § 1443(1) upon a petition alleging that the prosecution stems exclusively from the petitioners' peaceful exercise of their right to equal accommodation in establishments covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, § 201 et seq., 78 Stat. 243, 42 U.S.C. § 2000a et seq. (1964 ed.). Since that Act itself, as construed by this Court in Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, 379 U.S. 306, 310, 85 S.Ct. 384, 388, 13 L.Ed.2d 300, specifically and uniquely guarantees that the conduct alleged in the removal petition in Rachel may 'not be the subject of trespass prosecutions,' the defendants inevitably are 'denied or cannot enforce in the courts of (the) State a right under any law providing for * * * equal civil rights,' by merely being brought before a state court to defend such a prosecution. The present case, however, is far different.
To sustain removal of these prosecutions to a federal court upon the allegations of the petitions in this case would therefore mark a complete departure from the terms of the removal statute, which allow removal only when a person is 'denied or cannot enforce' a specified federal right 'in the courts of (the) State,' and a complete departure as well from the consistent line of this Court's decisions from Strauder v. State of West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664, to Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Powers, 201 U.S. 1, 26 S.Ct. 387, 50 L.Ed. 633.26 Those cases all stand for at least one basic proposition: It is not enough to support removal under § 1443(1) to allege or show that the defendant's federal equal civil rights have been illegally and corruptly denied by state administrative officials in advance of trial, that the charges against the defendant are false, or that the defendant is unable to obtain a fair trial in a particular state court. The motives of the officers bringing the charges may be corrupt, but that does not show that the state trial court will find the defendant guilty if he is innocent, or that in any other manner the defendant will be 'denied or cannot enforce in the courts' of the State any right under a federal law providing for equal civil rights. The civil rights removal statute does not require and does not permit the judges of the federal courts to put their brethren of the state judiciary on trial. Under § 1443(1), the vindication of the defendant's federal rights is left to the state courts except in the rare situations where it can be clearly predicted by reason of the operation of a pervasive and explicit state or federal law that those rights will inevitably be denied by the very act of bringing the defendant to trial in the state court. State of Georgia v. Rachel, supra; Strauder v. State of West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664.
What we have said is not for one moment to suggest that the individual petitioners in this case have not alleged a denial of rights guaranteed to them under federal law. If, as they allege, they are being prosecuted on baseless charges solely because of their race, then there has been an outrageous denial of their federal rights, and the federal courts are far from powerless to redress the wrongs done to them. The most obvious remedy is the traditional one emphasized in the line of cases from Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313, 25 L.Ed. 667, to Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Powers, 201 U.S. 1, 26 S.Ct. 387, 50 L.Ed. 633—vindication of their federal claims on direct review by this Court, if those claims have not been vindicated by the trial or reviewing courts of the State. That is precisely what happened in two of the cases in the Rives-Powers line of decisions, where removal under the predecessor of § 1443(1) was held to be unauthorized, but where the state court convictions were overturned because of a denial of the defendants' federal rights at their trials.27 That is precisely what has happened in countless cases this Court has reviewed over the years—cases like Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 382 U.S. 87, 86 S.Ct. 211, 15 L.Ed.2d 176, to name one at random decided in the present Term. 'Cases where Negroes are prosecuted and convicted in state courts can find their way expeditiously to this Court, provided they present constitutional questions.' England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 375 U.S. 411, 434, 84 S.Ct. 461, 475, 11 L.Ed.2d 440 (Douglas, J., concurring).
Other sanctions, civil and criminal, are available in the federal courts against officers of a State who violate the petitioners' federal constitutional and statutory rights. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1964 ed.) the officers may be made to respond in damages not only for violations of rights conferred by federal equal civil rights laws, but for violations of other federal constitutional and statutory rights as well.28 Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492. And only this Term we have held that the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 241 (1964 ed.), a criminal law that imposes punishment of up to 10 years in prison, may be invoked against those who conspire to deprive any citizen of the 'free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States' by 'causing the arrest of Negroes by means of false reports that such Negroes had committed criminal acts.'29 United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 756, 86 S.Ct. 1170, 1177, 16 L.Ed.2d 239.
But the question before us now is not whether state officials in Mississippi have engaged in conduct for which they may be civilly or criminally liable under federal law. The question, precisely, is whether the individual petitioners are entitled to remove these state prosecutions to a federal court under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 1443(1). Unless the words of this removal statute are to be disregarded and the previous consistent decisions of this Court completely repudiated, the answer must clearly be that no removal is authorized in this case. In the Rachel case, decided today, we have traced the course of those decisions against the historic background of the statute they were called upon to interpret. And in Rachel we have concluded that removal to the federal court in the narrow circumstances there presented would not be a departure from the teaching of this Court's decisions, because the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in those narrow circumstances, 'substitutes a right for a crime.' Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, 379 U.S. 306, 315, 85 S.Ct. 384, 391, 13 L.Ed.2d 300.
It is worth contemplating what the result would be if the strained interpretation of § 1443(1) urged by the individual petitioners were to prevail. In the fiscal year 1963 there were 14 criminal removal cases of all kinds in the entire Nation; in fiscal 1964 there were 43. The present case was decided by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on June 22, 1965, just before the end of the fiscal year. In that year, fiscal 1965, there were 1,079 criminal removal cases in the Fifth Circuit alone.30 But this phenomenal increase is no more than a drop in the bucket of what could reasonably be expected in the future. For if the individual petitioners should prevail in their interpretation of § 1443(1), then every criminal case in every court of every State—on any charge from a five dollar misdemeanor to first-degree murder—would be removable to a federal court upon a petition alleging (1) that the defendant was being prosecuted because of his race31 and that he was completely innocent of the charge brought against him, or (2) that he would be unable to obtain a fair trial in the state court. On motion to remand, the federal court would be required in every case to hold a hearing, which would amount to at least a preliminary trial of the motivations of the state officers who arrested and charged the defendant, of the quality of the state court or judge before whom the charges were filed and of the defendant's innocence or guilt. And the federal court might, of course, be located hundreds of miles away from the place where the charge was brought. This hearing could be followed either by a full trial in the federal court, or by a remand order. Every remand order would be appealable as of right to a United States Court of Appeals and, if affirmed there, would then be reviewable by petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court. If the remand order were eventually affirmed, there might, if the witnesses were still available, finally be a trial in the state court, months or years after the original charge was brought. If the remand order were eventually reversed, there might finally be a trial in the federal court, also months or years after the original charge was brought.
But before establishing the regime the individual petitioners propose, Congress would no doubt fully consider many questions. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has mentioned some of the practical questions that would be involved: 'If the removal jurisdiction is to be expanded and federal courts are to try offenses against state laws, cases not originally cognizable in the federal courts, what law is to govern, who is to prosecute, under what law is a convicted defendant to be sentenced and to whose institution is he to be committed * * *?' Baines v. City of Danville, 357 F.2d 756, 768—769. To these questions there surely should be added the very practical inquiry as to how many hundreds of new federal judges and other federal court personnel would have to be added in order to cope with the vastly increased caseload that would be produced.
We need not attempt to catalog the issues of policy that Congress might feel called upon to consider before making such an extreme change in the removal statute. But prominent among those issues, obviously, would be at least two fundamental questions: Has the historic practice of holding state criminal trials in state courts—with power of ultimate review of any federal questions in this Court—been such a failure that the relationship of the state and federal courts should now be revolutionized? Will increased responsibility of the state courts in the area of federal civil rights be promoted and encouraged by denying those courts any power at all to exercise that responsibility?
We postulate these grave questions of practice and policy only to point out that if changes are to be made in the long-settled interpretation of the provisions of this century-old removal statute, it is for Congress and not for this Court to make them. Fully aware of the established meaning the removal statute had been given by a consistent series of decisions in this Court, Congress in 1964 declined to act on proposals to amend the law.34 All that Congress did was to make remand orders appealable, and thus invite a contemporary judicial consideration of the meaning of the unchanged provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 1443. We have accepted that invitation and have fully considered the language and history of those provisions. Having done so, we find that § 1443 does not justify removal of these state criminal prosecutions to a federal court. Accordingly the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
The Federal District Courts were created by the First Congress (1 Stat. 73) which designated a few heads of jurisdiction for the District Courts (§ 9) and for the Circuit Courts (§ 11) some being concurrent with those of the state courts, others being exclusive. These categories of jurisdiction—later enlarged—were largely for the benefit of plaintiffs. There was concern that the rivalries, jealousies, and animosities among the States made necessary and appropriate the creation of a dual system of courts.
The alternative—the one India took—was to let the state courts be the arbiters of federal as well as state rights with ultimate review in the Federal Supreme Court. But the federal court system was the choice we made and those courts have functioned throughout our history. In the years since 1789, the jurisdiction of the federal courts where federal rights are in issue has been steadily expanded (see Hart & Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System 727—733 (1953)) particularly with the creation of a general 'federal question' jurisdiction in 1875. 18 Stat. 470.
The removal laws passed from time to time have responded to two main concerns: First, a federal fact-finding forum is often indispensable to the effective enforcement of those guarantees against local action.2 The federal guarantee turns ordinarily upon contested issues of fact. Those rights, therefore, will be of only academic value in many areas of the country unless the facts are objectively found. Secondly, swift enforcement of the federal right is imperative if the guarantees are to survive and not be slowly strangled by long, drawn-out, costly, cumbersome proceedings which the Congress feared might result in some state courts. The delays of state criminal process, the perilous vicissitudes of litigation in the state courts, the onerous burdens on the poor and the indigent who usually espouse unpopular causes—these threaten to engulf the federal guarantees. It is in that light that 28 U.S.C. § 1443(1) should be read and construed.
It is difficult to discern whether the Court ascribes different meanings to the words 'is denied' and 'cannot enforce' as used in the statute. In my view, it is essential that these two aspects of § 1443(1) be distinguished. The words 'is denied' refer to a present deprivation of rights while the language 'cannot enforce' has reference to an anticipated state court frustration of equal civil rights. Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313, 25 L.Ed. 667, and subsequent decisions of this Court which the majority discusees, were concerned with claims of the 'cannot enforce' variety.5 The Court dealt, in those cases, with the issue of unequal administration of justice in the process of jury selection. The concern was that removal might be permitted on merely a speculation that the state court would not, in the future, discharge its obligation to follow the 'law of the land.' Whatever the correctness of those decisions as to the 'cannot enforce' clause, they have no application whatever to a claim of a present denial of equal civil rights.
In early 1964, for example, the Supreme Court of Mississippi affirmed convictions in harassment prosecutions arising out of the May 1961 Freedom Rides. See Thomas v. State, 252 Miss. 527, 160 So.2d 657; Farmer v. State, Miss., 161 So.2d 159; Knight v. State, 248 Miss. 850, 161 So.2d 521. More than another year was to pass before this Court reached and reversed those convictions.11 Thomas v. Mississippi, 380 U.S. 524, 85 S.Ct. 1327, 14 L.Ed.2d 265 (1965).
The threshold question—whether initiation of the state prosecution has 'denied' a federal right—is resolvable by the federal court on a hearing on the motion to remove. As noted, it is in substance a plea in bar to the prosecution, a plea grounded on federal law. If the motion is granted, the removed case is concluded at that stage, as a case of misuse of a state prosecution has been made out. Cf. O'Campo v. Hardisty, 9 Cir., 262 F.2d 621; De Busk v. Harvin, 5 Cir., 212 F.2d 143. In other words, the result of removal is not the transfer of the trial from the state to the federal courts in this type of case. If after hearing it does not appear that the state prosecution is being used to deny federal rights, the case is remanded for trial in the state courts. 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c) (1964 ed.). But the removal statute meanwhile serves a protective function. Filing of the petition removes the case and automatically stays further proceedings in the state court. 28 U.S.C. § 1446(e) (1964 ed.) Moreover, if the defendant is confined, the removal judge must, without awaiting a hearing, issue a writ to transfer the prisoner to federal custody, 28 U.S.C. § 1446(f) (1964 ed.), and he may then enlarge him on bail.
Defendants also allege that they 'cannot enforce' in the courts of Greenwood, the locality in which their cases are to be tried, their equal civil rights. This, unlike a claim of present denial of rights, rests on prediction of the future performance of the state courts; as such, it admittedly falls within the Rives-Powers doctrine. I agree with the majority that, in providing for appeal of remand orders in civil rights removal cases, Congress meant for us to reconsider that line of cases.13 Unlike the majority, however, I believe that those cases, to the extent that they limit removal to instances where the inability to enforce equal civil rights springs from a state statute or constitutional provision compelling the forbidden discrimination, should not be followed.14 That construction of § 1443(1) resulted, I think, from a misreading of the removal provisions of the Act of 1866.
The Black Codes were not the only target of this law. Vagrancy laws were another—laws fair on their face which were enforced so as to reduce free men to slaves 'in punishment of crimes of the slightest magnitude' (Id., at 1123), laws which declare men 'vagrants because they have no homes and because they have no employment' in order 'to retain them still in a state of real servitude.' Id., at 1151.
In my view, § 1443(1) requires the federal court to decide whether the defendant's allegation (that the state court will not fairly enforce his equal rights) is true.16 If the defendant is unable to demonstrate this inability to enforce his rights, the case is remanded to the state court. But if the federal court is persuaded that the state court indeed will not make a good-faith effort to apply the paramount federal law pertaining to 'equal civil rights,' then the federal court must accept the removal and try the case on the merits.
Execution of the legislative mandate calls for particular sensitivity on the part of federal district judges; but the delicacy of the task surely does not warrant refusal to attempt it. I am confident that the federal district judges would exercise care and good judgment in passing on 'cannot enforce' claims. A district judge could not lightly assume that the state court would shirk its responsibilities, and should remand the case to the state court unless it appeared by clear and convincing evidence that the allegations of an inability to enforce equal civil rights were true. Cf. Amsterdam, Criminal Prosecutions Affecting Federally Guaranteed Civil Rights: Federal Removal and Habeas Corpus Jurisdiction to Abort State Court Trial, 113 U.Pa.L.Rev. 793, 854—863, 911—912 (1965). A requirement that defendants seeking removal demonstrate a basis for 'firm prediction' of inability to enforce equal civil rights in the state court is the only necessary consequence of the revision of 1874 which silently deleted the provision for post-trial removal from the statute. In this way, the legitimate interests of federalism which Rives sought to protect would be respected without emasculating this statute.
The Court takes considerable comfort from the availability to defendants of numerous other federal remedies, such as direct review in this Court, federal habeas corpus, civil actions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1964 ed.), and even federal criminal prosecutions. But it is relevant to note when these alternative remedies were conferred. The extension of the habeas corpus remedy to state prisoners was enacted in 1867 by the Thirty-ninth Congress, the same body which enacted the removal statute we here consider. 14 Stat. 385. The criminal statutes involved in our recent decisions in United States v. Price, 383 U.S. 787, 86 S.Ct. 1152, 16 L.Ed.2d 267, and United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 86 S.Ct. 1170, 16 L.Ed.2d 239, were first enacted in 1866 and 1870. 14 Stat. 27; 16 Stat. 141, 144. The civil remedy provided by 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was enacted in 1871. 17 Stat. 13. If any inference is to be drawn from the existence of these coordinate remedies, it is that Congress was concerned, at the time this removal statute was passed, to protect from state court denial the equal civil rights of United States citizens. Rather than take comfort from the broad array of possible remedies, we should take instruction from it.
'(2) For any act under color of authority derived from any law providing for equal rights, or for refusing to do any act on the ground that it would be inconsistent with such law.' 28 U.S.C. § 1443 (164 ed.). See State of Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 86 S.Ct. 1783.
See also § 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 443, 42 U.S.C. § 1973i(b) (1964 ed., Supp. I).
'* * * § 1443(2) * * * is limited to federal officers and those assisting them or otherwise acting in an official or quasi-official capacity.' Peacock v. City of Greenwood, 347 F.2d 679, 686 (C.A.5th Cir.). In reaching this conclusion, the Court of Appeals relied strongly on the decision of the district Court in City of Clarksdale v. Gertge, 237 F.Supp. 213 (D.C.N.D.Miss.). The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has also adopted this construction of § 1443(2). Baines v. City of Danville, 357 F.2d 756, 771—772. The Courts of Appeals for the Second and Third Circuits have refused to grant removal under § 1443(2) on allegations comparable to those in the present case. People of State of New York v. Galamison, 342 F.2d 255 (C.A.2d Cir.); City of Chester v. Anderson, 347 F.2d 823 (C.A.3d Cir.). See also State of Arkansas v. Howard, 218 F.Supp. 626 (D.C.E.D.Ark.).
See Rev.Stat. § 641 (1874); Judicial Code of 1911, c. 231, § 31, 36 Stat. 1096; 28 U.S.C. § 74 (1926 ed.); 28 U.S.C. § 1443 (1952 ed.). Although the 1948 revision modified the language of the prior provision in numerous respects, including the elimination of the phrase 'officer * * * or other person,' the reviser's note states simply that 'Changes were made in phraseology.' H.R.Rep.No. 308, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., p. A134. The statutory development of the civil rights removal provision is set out in the Appendix to the Court's opinion in State of Georgia v. Rachel, supra.
By the Act of March 3, 1865, 13 Stat. 507, Congress established a Bureau under the War Department, to last during the rebellion and for one year thereafter, to assist refugees and freedmen from rebel states and other areas by providing food, shelter, and clothing. The Bureau was under the direction of a commissioner appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. Under § 4 of the Act, the commissioner was authorized to set apart for loyal refugees and freedmen up to 40 acres of lands that had been abandoned in the rebel states or that had been acquired by the United States by confiscation or sale. The section specifically provided that persons assigned to such lands 'shall be protected in the use and enjoyment of the land.' 13 Stat. 508. The Act was continued for two years by the Act of July 16, 1866, c. 200, § 1, 14 Stat. 173. In addition, § 3 of the latter Act amended the 1865 Act to authorize the commissioner to 'appoint such agents, clerks, and assistants as may be required for the proper conduct of the bureau.' The section also provided that military officers or enlisted men might be detailed for service and assigned to duty under the Act. 14 Stat. 174. Further, § 13 of the amendatory Act of 1866 specifically provided that 'the commissioner of this bureau shall at all times co-operate with private benevolent associations of citizens in aid of freedmen, and with agents and teachers, duly accredited and appointed by them, and shall hire or provide by lease buildings for purposes of education whenever such associations shall, without cost to the government, provide suitable teachers and means of instruction; and he shall furnish such protection as may be required for the safe conduct of such schools.' 14 Stat. 176. Section 14 of the amendatory Act of 1866 established, in essentially the same terms for States where the ordinary course of judicial proceedings had been interrupted by the rebellion, the rights and obligations that had already been enacted in § 1 of the Act of April 9, 1866 (the Civil Rights Act), and provided for the extension of military jurisdiction to those States in order to protect the rights secured. 14 Stat. 176—177. By the Act of July 6, 1868, 15 Stat. 83, the Freedmen's Bureau legislation was continued for an additional year.
The limitation of 28 U.S.C. § 1443(2) to official enforcement activity under federal equal civil rights laws draws support from analogous provisions in the removal statutes available to federal revenue officers. Long before 1866, federal statutes had guaranteed certain federal revenue officers the right to remove to the federal court state court proceedings instituted against them because of their official actions. These statutes characteristically used the 'officer * * * or other person' formula in defining those entitled to the benefit of removal. The Customs Act of 1815, the primordial officer removal statute, described the 'other person' as one 'aiding or assisting' the revenue officer. Act of Feb. 4, 1815, c. 31, § 8, 3 Stat. 198. See also the Act of March 3, 1815, c. 94, § 6, 3 Stat. 233. The removal clause of a subsequent statute, the Force Act of 1833, was less specific with regard to the scope of the 'other person' language, but it focused upon the possibility that persons other than federal officers or their deputies might find themselves faced with the prospect of defending titles claimed under the federal revenue laws against suits or prosecutions in state courts. Act of March 2, 1833, c. 57, § 3, 4 Stat. 633. Thus, when Congress desired to grant removal of suits and prosecutions against private individuals, it knew how to make specific provision for it. Cf. Act of Jan. 22, 1869, 15 Stat. 267 (Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863, 12 Stat. 755, amended to permit removal of suits or prosecutions against carriers for losses caused by rebel or Union forces).
The provision in § 5 of the Act of March 3, 1863, specifically extending removal to criminal as well as civil proceedings, was added on the Senate floor. Cong.Globe, 37th Cong., 3d Sess., 538. The debates focused on the need to protect federal officers against state criminal prosecutions. See, e.g., id., at 535 (remarks of Senator Clark); id., at 537—538 (remarks of Senator Cowan).
The language 'arrest or imprisonment, trespasses, or wrongs' is, of course, easily read as describing the full range of enforcement activities in which federal officers might be engaged under the Civil Rights Act. In a case arising under § 5 of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863, this Court disallowed removal of an action of ejectment brought in a Virginia state court by the heir of a Confederate naval officer whose land had been seized under the Confiscation Act of July 17, 1862, 12 Stat. 589. The confiscated land had been sold at public auction, and the rights to the land subsequently vested in a man named Bigelow, against whom the action of ejectment was brought. In denying removal under § 5 of the 1863 Act, Mr. Justice Strong for a unanimous Court stated, 'The specification (in § 5) of arrests and imprisonments * * * followed by more general words, justifies the inference that the other trespasses and wrongs mentioned are trespasses and wrongs ejusdem generis, or of the same nature as those which had been previously specified.' Bigelow v. Forrest, 9 Wall. 339, 348—349, 19 L.Ed. 696.
The second phrase of 28 U.S.C. § 1443(2), 'for refusing to do any act on the ground that it would be inconsistent with such law,' has no relevance to this case. It is clear that removal under that language is available only to state officers. The phrase was added by the House of Representatives as an amendment to the Senate bill during the debates on the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In reporting the House bill, Representative Wilson, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the floor manager of the bill, said, 'I will state that this amendment is intended to enable State officers, who shall refuse to enforce State laws discriminating in reference to (the rights created by § 1 of the bill) on account of race or color, to remove their cases to the United States courts when prosecuted for refusing to enforce those laws.' Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1367.
See State of Georgia v. Rachel, ante, 384 U.S. at 788 792, 86 S.Ct. at 1788—1790. See also, People of State of New York v. Galamison, 342 F.2d 255, 266—268 (C.A.2d Cir.).
Section 203(c) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000a—2(c) (1964 ed.), the provision involved in Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, 379 U.S. 306, 310, 85 S.Ct. 384, 388, 13 L.Ed.2d 300, and State of Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. at 793—794, 804—805, 86 S.Ct. at 1790—1791, 1796—1797, explicitly provides that no person shall 'punish or attempt to punish any person for exercising or attempting to exercise any right or privilege' secured by the public accommodations section of the Act. None of the federal statutes invoked by the defendants in the present case contains any such provision. See note 3 and note 7, supra.
'Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.' 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1964 ed.).
'They shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.' 18 U.S.C. § 241 (1964 ed.).
See Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U.S. 354, 359—380; 389—412, 79 S.Ct. 468, 473—484, 489—500, 3 L.Ed.2d 368 (separate opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan).
See Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 348—350, 4 L.Ed. 97; The Moses Taylor, 4 Wall. 411, 428—430, 18 L.Ed. 397; Mayor v. Cooper, 6 Wall. 247, 251—254, 18 L.Ed. 851; Railway Co. v. Whitton's Adm'r, 13 Wall. 270, 287—290, 20 L.Ed. 571; State of Tennessee v. Davis, 100 U.S. 257, 262—271, 25 L.Ed. 648; Strauder v. State of West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 310—312, 25 L.Ed. 664. A number of bills enlarging the right of removal to a federal court in civil rights cases are before the present Congress. See, for example: S. 2923, S. 3170, H.R. 12807, H.R. 12818, H.R. 12845, H.R. 13500, H.R. 13941, H.R. 14112, H.R. 14113, H.R. 14770, H.R. 14775, H.R. 14836 (89th Cong., 2d. Sess.).
Section 903 of H.R. 7702, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., would have amended 28 U.S.C. § 1443 to enlarge the availability of removal in civil rights cases. H.R. 7702, however, did not emerge from the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. Cf. State of Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. p. 787, 86 S.Ct. p. 1787, n. 7.
Act of April 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27. There were a handful of other removal statutes passed in the interim. See, e.g., Act of February 4, 1815, § 8, 3 Stat. 198 (removal of civil and criminal actions against federal customs officers for official acts); Act of March 2, 1833, § 3, 4 Stat. 633 (removal of civil and criminal actions against federal officers on account of acts done under the revenue laws), see State of Tennessee v. Davis, 100 U.S. 257, 25 L.Ed. 648; Act of March 3, 1863, § 5, 12 Stat. 756 (removal of civil and criminal actions against federal officers—civil or military—for acts done during the existence of the Civil War under color of federal authority).
His victory 'destroyed the ability of the states to sabotage the Union through their judiciary systems.' 3 Brant, James Madison 42 (1950). Cf. England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 375 U.S. 411, 416—417, 84 S.Ct. 461, 465, 11 L.Ed. 440.
Whatever the full reach of the statutory language 'any law providing for the equal civil rights of citizens,' the wrongs of which these defendants and those in Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 86 S.Ct. 1783, 16 L.Ed.2d 925, complain (with the possible exception of pure First Amendment claims) are well within its coverage. See e.g., 42 U.S.C. §§ 1971, 1973i(b) (1964 ed. & Supp. I) (statutes adopted under Congress' power to assure equal access to the vote to all citizens, regardless of 'race, color, or previous condition of servitude,' U.S.Const. Amendment XV); 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (1964 ed.) (guaranteeing all persons the right not to be subjected to 'punishment, pains, penalties * * * (or) exactions' not suffered in like circumstances by 'white citizens'); 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000a, 2000a—2 (1964 ed.) (discussed in State of Georgia v. Rachel, supra). I doubt that any meaningful distinction could be drawn for removal purposes between, for example, rights secured by 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and those guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause, which largely reiterated § 1981 in constitutional terms. But it is unnecessary, on my view of these cases, to settle this question. I therefore do not reach the highly questionable propositions relied upon by the majority in restricting the scope of the rights which § 1443(1) encompasses.
Cf. authorities cited, note 8, supra. Various federal statutes make it a crime to interfere with or punish the exercise of federally protected rights. See, e.g., § 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 443, 42 U.S.C. § 1973i(b) (1964 ed., Supp. I); § 203 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 244, 42 U.S.C. § 2000a—2 (164 ed.). See infra, at 847—848 and note 12.
The irrationality of the Rives-Powers requirement that removal be predicated on a facially unconstitutional statute was known to Congress when it amended the law to make possible appeal from an order remanding the case to the state court. As then-Senator Humphrey, floor manager of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, put it: '(T)he real problem at present is not a statute which is on its face unconstitutional; it is the unconstitutional application of a statute. When a State statute has been unconstitutionally applied, most Federal district judges presently believe themselves bound by these old decisions. * * * Enactment of (the appeal provision) will give the appellate courts an opportunity to reexamine this question.' 110 Cong.Rec. 6551 (1964). (Emphasis added.) Similar invitations to overrule the Rives-Powers line of cases were uttered by Senator Dodd (110 Cong.Rec. 6955—6956) and Congressman Kastenmeier (110 Cong.Rec. 2770) and it is fair to assume that Congress did not reinstate the right to appeal from a remand order merely to allow civil rights litigants the brutal luxury of an appeal, the inevitable outcome of which would be an affirmance.
In support of its contrary result, the Court cites the number of removal petitions filed in the year 1965. I am unaware of any relevance this figure has in the interpretation of a statute enacted in 1866. Indeed, if any contemporary incidents are to provide guidance, I should think we would be aided by the debates and votes in Congress on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Opponents of the provision allowing appeals from a remand order warned of possible dilatory tactics and disruptions of the judicial processes—state and federal—which might result; this was virtually the only expressed basis of opposition to this proposed amendment. See, e.g., H.R.Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., 59, 67, 111—112 (minority reports); 110 Cong.Rec. 2769—2784 (passim) (House); id., at 13468, 13879 (Senate). Proposals to delete the appeal provision were decisively rejected, 118—76 in the House (id., at 2784) and in the Senate on two occasions, 51—31 (id., at 13468) and 66—25 (id., at 13879).

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