Court Opinion

ID: 9428909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:07.299887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:16.058677
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
As I noted in my separate opinion in Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160, 189, the Congress that enacted § 1 of the Civil *406Rights Act of 1866 “intended only to guarantee all citizens the same legal capacity to make and enforce contracts, to obtain, own, and convey property, and to litigate and give evidence.” Any violation of that guarantee — whether deliberate, negligent, or purely accidental — would, in my opinion, violate 42 U. S. C. § 1981. The statute itself contains no requirement that an intent to discriminate must be proved.
The Court has broadened the coverage of § 1981 far beyond the scope actually intended by its authors; in essence, the Court has converted a statutory guarantee of equal rights into a grant of equal opportunities. See Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409; Runyon v. McCrary, supra. Whether or not those decisions faithfully reflect the intent of Congress, the enlarged coverage of the statute “is now an important part of the fabric of our law.” Runyon, supra, at 190 (Stevens, J., concurring).
Since I do not believe Congress intended § 1981 to have any application at all in the area of employment discrimination generally covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an analysis of the motives and intent of the Reconstruction Congress cannot be expected to tell us whether proof of intentional discrimination should be required in the judicially created portion of the statute’s coverage. Since Congress required no such proof in the statute it actually enacted, a logician would be comfortable in concluding that no such proof should ever be required. Nevertheless, since that requirement tends to define the entire coverage of § 1981 in a way that better reflects the basic intent of Congress than would a contrary holding, I concur in the conclusion reached by the Court in Part II of its opinion insofar as it relates to the statutory protection of equal opportunity but, perhaps illogically, would reach a different conclusion in a case challenging a denial of a citizen’s civil rights.
Accordingly, I join the Court’s judgment and Parts III and IV of its opinion.