Court Opinion

ID: 8121852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 14:58:28.354556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:39:02.553573
License: Public Domain

Hammond, D. J.,
charged the jury that this act of the legislature, so far as it abrogated the common-law right of action for wrongful exclusion from railroad cars on roads running between two or more states, was unconstitutional, because it was a regulation of commerce between the states, which the legislature had no right to make, the exclusive right to make it being by the constitution of the United States in congress. Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U. S. 485.
On the question of the plaintiff’s character for chastity, ho charged the same principles of law were to be applied to women as men in determining whether the exclusion was lawful or not; that the social penalties of exclusion of unchaste -women from hotels, theaters, and other public places could not be imported into the law of common carriers; that they had a right to travel in the streets and on the public highways, and other people who travel must expect to meet them in such such places; and, as long as their conduct was unobjectionable while in such places, they could not be excluded. The carrier is bound to carry good, bad, and indifferent, and has nothing to do with the morals of his passengers, if their behavior be proper while traveling. Neither can the carrier *502use the character for chastity of his female passengers as a basis of classification, so that he may put all chaste women, or women who have the reputation of being chaste, into one car, and those known or reputed to be unchaste in another car. Such a regulation would be contrary to public policy, and unreasonable. It would put every woman purchasing a railroad ticket on trial for her virtue before the conductor as her judge, and, in case of mistake, would lead .to breaches of the peace. It would practically exclude all sensible and sensitive women from traveling at all, no matter how virtuous, for fear they might be put into or unconsciously occupy the wrong car.
The.police power of the carrier is sufficient protection to other passengers, and he can remove all persons, men or women, whose conduct at the time is annoying, or whose reputation for misbehavior and indecent demeanor in public is so notoriously bad that it furnishes a reasonable ground to believe that the person will be offensive or annoying to others traveling in the same ear; and this is as far as the carrier has any right to go. He can no more classify women according to their reputation for chastity, or want of it, than he can so grade the men.
•The car in which the plaintiff was required to sit was used as a smoking car, and was at the time crowded with passengers, mostly emigrants, traveling on cheap rates, with many women and children. It was claimed by the company that its acommodations were as good as the ladies’ car, and the plaintiff had no right to refuse it. On this point the court charged that the plaintiff was entitled to first-class accommodations, which meant that those tendered were to be equal in all respects to the best which the company offered on that train to other female passengers traveling alone as the plaintiff was. If being chaste she would have been entitled to ride in the ladies’ car, she was entitled to ride in it notwithstanding the alleged want of chastity, if her behavior was lady-like; and having already acquired a seat in it she could not be excluded, nor was she compelled to accept a seat 'in the *503other car, if, because of the smoking or bad ventilation or other causes, it was disagreeable to her, there being room for her in the ladies’ car.
Verdict for plaintiff for §3,000.
Note. See Brown v. Memphis & C. R. Co. 4 Fed. Rep. 37.