Stanley Matthews ( lawyer ) Thomas Stanley Matthews ( July 21 , 1824 – March 22 , 1889 ) , known as Stanley Matthews , was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court , serving from May 1881 to his death in 1889 . Matthews was the Court ' s 46th justice . Before his appointment to the Court by President James Garfield , Matthews served as a senator from his home state of Ohio . Career . Matthews was born in Cincinnati , Ohio and studied at Kenyon College . He practiced law in Cincinnati before moving to Maury County , Tennessee , where he practiced from 1840 to 1845 . After editing the " Cincinnati Herald " for two years from 1846 to 1848 , Matthews was selected to serve as the clerk of the Ohio House of Representatives and as a county judge in Hamilton County . He was then elected to the Ohio State Senate , where he served in 1856 and 1857 . He was then appointed as the U . S . Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio , serving from 1858 to 1861 . In 1861 , Matthews resigned as United States Attorney to serve as a lieutenant colonel with the 23rd Ohio Infantry of the Union Army during the American Civil War . Matthews ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1876 , but was defeated . A year later , he won a special election to the Senate to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of John Sherman . He did not seek reelection . Early in 1881 , President Rutherford B . Hayes nominated Matthews for a position as an Associate Justice on the U . S . Supreme Court . Matthews was a controversial nominee , and as the nomination came near the end of Hayes ' s term , the Senate did not act on it . Upon succeeding Hayes , incoming President James A . Garfield renominated Matthews , and the Senate confirmed him by a vote of 24 to 23 , the narrowest confirmation for a successful U . S . Supreme Court nominee in history . He served on the Court until his death in 1889 . His funeral was attended by many luminaries . His remains are interred at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati , Ohio Also interred there is John McLean , another Associate Justice . A collection of Justice Matthews ' s correspondence and other papers are located at the Rutherford B . Hayes Presidential Center library in Fremont , Ohio and open for research . Additional papers and collections are at : Cincinnati Historical Society , Cincinnati , Ohio ; Library of Congress , Manuscript and Prints & Photographs Divisions , Washington , D . C . ; Ohio Historical Society , Columbus , Ohio ; . Pierpont Morgan Library , New York City , New York ; State Historical Society of Wisconsin , Archives Division , Madison , Wisconsin ; . and Mississippi State Department of Archives and History , Jackson , Mississippi . Important decisions . Among these was Yick Wo v . Hopkins . In 1880 , the elected officials of city of San Francisco thought they had a clever way to deal with the Chinese in the city . They passed an ordinance that persons could not operate a laundry in a wooden building without a permit from the Board of Supervisors . The ordinance conferred upon the Board of Supervisors the discretion to grant or withhold the permits . At the time , about 95 % of the city ' s 320 laundries were operated in wooden buildings . Approximately two - thirds of those laundries were owned by Chinese persons . Although most of the city ' s wooden building laundry owners applied for a permit , none were granted to any Chinese owner , while virtually all non - Chinese applicants were granted a permit . [ 2 ] [ citation needed ] Yick Wo ( 益和 , Pinyin : Yì Hé , Americanization : Lee Yick ) , who had lived in California and had operated a laundry in the same wooden building for many years and held a valid license to operate his laundry issued by the Board of Fire - Wardens , continued to operate his laundry and was convicted and fined $ 10 . 00 for violating the ordinance . He sued for a writ of habeas corpus after he was imprisoned in default for having refused to pay the fine . The Court , in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Matthews , found that the administration of the statute in question was discriminatory and that there was therefore no need to even consider whether the ordinance itself was lawful . Even though the Chinese laundry owners were usually not American citizens , the court ruled they were still entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment . Justice Matthews also noted that the court had previously ruled that it was acceptable to hold administrators of the law liable when they abused their authority . He denounced the law as a blatant attempt to exclude Chinese from the laundry trade in San Francisco , and the court struck down the law , ordering dismissal of all charges against other laundry owners who had been jailed . Family . Matthews ' grandson was T . S . Matthews , editor of Time $ 2agazine .