Court Opinion

ID: 8878567
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 19:50:18.82008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:30.484526
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, District Judge
(dissenting).
The district court and this Court in its majority opinion have held that Fun Fair Amusement Park is not a place of “entainment” and is therefore not “a place of public accommodation” within the meaning of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These holdings are based upon a finding that Congress did not intend an amusement park to be a place of “entertainment” within the meaning of § 201(b) (3), 42 U.S.C.A. § 2000a(b) (3). The intent of Congress on this point, as that intent may be determined from the legislative history concerning the sections in question, is obscure to say the least. After studying the briefs and hearing the arguments of the parties in the case now before this Court, it was determined that the legislative history as presented to the Court by the parties was so inadequate and inconclusive that a “thorough search and analysis of the legislative history concerning 42 U.S.C.A. 2000a, b(3) and c(3) was needed.” Accordingly, it was ordered that the United States, acting through the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, file with this Court its brief setting forth the legislative history of these provisions to the extent that that history might be pertinent to the issues involved upon this appeal and accord this Court the benefit of any views that might be pertinent thereto. Pursuant to that directive, the United States filed its memorandum setting forth the legislative history of these facts, and concluded, “Our study of that history has convinced us that it is inconclusive on these issues.” Thus, it occurs to me that an interpretation of §§ 201(b) (3) and 201(c) (3), based upon an extremely inadequate legislative history as the majority of this Court now does, is contrary to the overriding purpose of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This overriding purpose was made clear when on January 28, 1963, President Kennedy said in a message to Congress that:
“No action is more contrary to the spirit of our democracy and Constitution — or more rightfully resented by a Negro citizen who seeks only equal treatment — than the barring of that citizen from restaurants, hotels, theaters, recreational areas and other public accommodations and facilities.”
United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, 88th *97Congress, 1st Session, Hearings on Civil Rights, Part II, p. 1448.
Again, in his civil rights message on June 19, 1963, the President said:
“Events of recent weeks have again underlined how deeply our Negro citizens resent the injustice of being arbitrarily denied equal access to those facilities and accommodations which are otherwise open to the general public.”
United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, 88th Congress, 1st Session, Hearings on Civil Rights, Part II, p. 1447.
To correct this injustice, the President emphasized that:
“Federal action is needed now to secure the right of all citizens to the full enjoyment of all facilities which are open to the general public.”
United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, 88th Congress, 1st Session, Hearings on Civil Rights, Part II, p. 1448.
And, again, the President, in submitting to Congress that part of the Civil Rights Act here under scrutiny and in explaining his purpose in doing so, stated:
“For these reasons, I am today proposing, as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, a provision to guarantee all citizens equal access to the services and facilities of hotels, restaurants, places of amusement, and retail establishments.”
United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, 88th Congress, 1st Session, Hearings on Civil Rights, Part II, p. 1448.
The effect of the narrow construction as made both by the district court and the majority of this Court — this narrow construction being based upon an “inconclusive” legislative history — is to judicially determine and hold that an amusement park in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, located on Airline Highway, a main artery between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana, operating eleven major amusement facilities, ten of which were manufactured outside the State of Louisiana, which advertised its facilities over the radio and television and solicited the business of the public generally, with no restriction as to race or interstate travel, can, with the sanction of the law, refuse service to Negroes solely because of their race or color.
Such a holding completely ignores a strong and, to me, conclusive history of Executive and Congressional general intent and purpose to the effect that the enactment of Title II:
“Would make it possible to remove the daily affront and humiliation involved in discriminatory denials of access to facilities ostensibly open to the general public.”1
I respectfully dissent.

. Statement made by the House Judiciary Committee on Title II in reporting the bill on November 20, 1963. U.S. House of Representatives Report No. 914, 88th Congress, 1st Session, Part I, p. 18.