Opinion ID: 110461
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: In relevant part, the Thirteenth Amendment provides:

Text: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. In this case respondents challenge the conferring of a benefit upon white citizens by a measure that places a burden on black citizens as an unconstitutional badge of slavery. Relying on Justice Black's opinion for the Court in Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U. S. 217, the city argues that in the absence of a violation of specific enabling legislation enacted pursuant to § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment, any judicial characterization of an isolated street closing as a badge of slavery would constitute the usurpation of a law-making power far beyond the imagination of the amendment's authors. Id., at 227. [37] Pursuant to the authority created by § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress has enacted legislation to abolish both the conditions of involuntary servitude and the badges and incidents of slavery. [38] The exercise of that authority is not inconsistent with the view that the Amendment has self-executing force. As the Court noted in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S., at 439: `By its own unaided force and effect,' the Thirteenth Amendment `abolished slavery' and established universal freedom.' Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 20. Whether or not the Amendment itself did any more than thata question not involved in this caseit is at least clear that the Enabling Clause of that Amendment empowered Congress to do much more. [39] In Jones, the Court left open the question whether § 1 of the Amendment by its own terms did anything more than abolish slavery. [40] It is also appropriate today to leave that question open because a review of the justification for the official action challenged in this case demonstrates that its disparate impact on black citizens could not, in any event, be fairly characterized as a badge or incident of slavery. We begin our examination of respondents' Thirteenth Amendment argument by reiterating the conclusion that the record discloses no racially discriminatory motive on the part of the City Council. [41] Instead, the record demonstrates that the interests that did motivate the Council are legitimate. Proper management of the flow of vehicular traffic within a city requires the accommodation of a variety of conflicting interests: the motorist's interest in unhindered access to his destination, the city's interest in the efficient provision of municipal services, the commercial interest in adequate parking, the residents' interest in relative quiet, and the pedestrians' interest in safety. Local governments necessarily exercise wide discretion in making the policy decisions that accommodate these interests. In this case the city favored the interests of safety and tranquility. As a matter of constitutional law a city's power to adopt rules that will avoid anticipated traffic safety problems is the same as its power to correct those hazards that have been revealed by actual events. The decision to reduce the flow of traffic on West Drive was motivated, in part, by an interest in the safety of children walking to school. [42] That interest is equally legitimate whether it provides support for an arguably unnecessary preventive measure or for a community's reaction to a tragic accident that adequate planning might have prevented. See Thomas Cusack Co. v. Chicago, 242 U. S. 526. The residential interest in comparative tranquility is also unquestionably legitimate. That interest provides support for zoning regulations, designed to protect a quiet place where yards are wide, people few, and motor vehicles restricted. . . . Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U. S. 1, 9; Arlington County Board v. Richards, 434 U. S. 5, and for the accepted view that a man's home is his castle. The interest in privacy has the same dignity in a densely populated apartment complex, cf. Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, or in an affluent neighborhood of single-family homes. [43] In either context, the protection of the individual interest may involve the imposition of some burdens on the general public. Whether the individual privacy interests of the residents of Hein Park, coupled with the interests in safety, should be considered strong enough to overcome the more general interest in the use of West Drive as a thoroughfare is the type of question that a multitude of local governments must resolve every day. Because there is no basis for concluding that the interests favored by the city in its decision were contrived or pretextual, the District Court correctly concluded that it had no authority to review the wisdom of the city's policy decision. See Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 106, 109. The interests motivating the city's action are thus sufficient to justify an adverse impact on motorists who are somewhat inconvenienced by the street closing. That inconvenience cannot be equated to an actual restraint on the liberty of black citizens that is in any sense comparable to the odious practice the Thirteenth Amendment was designed to eradicate. The argument that the closing violates the Amendment must therefore rest, not on the actual consequences of the closing, but rather on the symbolic significance of the fact that most of the drivers who will be inconvenienced by the action are black. But the inconvenience of the drivers is a function of where they live and where they regularly drivenot a function of their race; the hazards and the inconvenience that the closing is intended to minimize are a function of the number of vehicles involved, not the race of their drivers or of the local residents. Almost any traffic regulationwhether it be a temporary detour during construction, a speed limit, a one-way street, or a no-parking signmay have a differential impact on residents of adjacent or nearby neighborhoods. Because urban neighborhoods are so frequently characterized by a common ethnic or racial heritage, a regulation's adverse impact on a particular neighborhood will often have a disparate effect on an identifiable ethnic or racial group. To regard an inevitable consequence of that kind as a form of stigma so severe as to violate the Thirteenth Amendment would trivialize the great purpose of that charter of freedom. Proper respect for the dignity of the residents of any neighborhood requires that they accept the same burdens as well as the same benefits of citizenship regardless of their racial or ethnic origin. This case does not disclose a violation of any of the enabling legislation enacted by Congress pursuant to § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment. To decide the narrow constitutional question presented by this record we need not speculate about the sort of impact on a racial group that might be prohibited by the Amendment itself. We merely hold that the impact of the closing of West Drive on nonresidents of Hein Park is a routine burden of citizenship; it does not reflect a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is Reversed.