Court Opinion

ID: 9423262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:06:46.961066+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:51.386850
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Fortas join,
concurring.
As I indicate in my opinion in the Peacock cases, post, p. 842, equal civil rights of a citizen of the United States are “denied” within the meaning of 28 U. S. C. § 1443 (1) (1964 ed.) when he is prosecuted for asserting them. Section 201 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 243, 42 U. S.. C. § 2000a (1964 ed.)) gave these defendants a right to equal service in places of public accommodation. Section 203 (78 Stat. 244, 42 U. S. C. .§ 2000a-2 (1964 ed.)) gave them a right against intimidation, coercion, or punishment for exercising those rights. And we held in Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, 379 U. S. 306, that §§ 201 and 203 precluded state criminal trespass convictions of sit-in demonstrators even though the sit-ins occurred *807and their prosecution had been instituted prior to the effective date of the 1964 Act.

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*807Congress, in other words, gave these defendants the right to enter the restaurants in question, to sit there, and to be served — a right that was construed by this Court to include immunity from prosecution after the effective date of the Act for acts done prior thereto.
It is the right to equal service in restaurants and the right to be free of prosecution for asserting that right— not the right to have a trespass conviction reversed — that the present prosecutions threaten. It is this right which must be vindicated by complete insulation from the State’s criminal process if it is to be wholly vindicated. It is this right which the defendants are “denied” so long as the present prosecutions persist.
Georgia claims that Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, supra, does not cover cases of sit-ins prosecuted for disorderly conduct or other unlawful acts. Of course that is true. But one of the functions of the hearing on the allegations of the removal petition will be to determine whether the defendants were ejected on racial grounds or for some other, valid, reason. The Court of Appeals correctly ruled that “in the event it is established that the removal of the appellants from the various places of public accommodation was done for racial reasons, then under authority of the Hamm case it would become the duty of the district court to order a dismissal of the prosecutions without further proceedings.” 342 F. 2d 336, 343. (Emphasis added.)
If service was denied for other reasons, no case for removal has been made out. And if, as is intimated, any doubt remains as to whether the restaurants in question were covered by the 1964 Act, that too should be left open in the hearing to be held before the District Court — a procedure to which the defendants do not object.