Court Opinion

ID: 9300274
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-02 17:06:45.019225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:13:39.467191
License: Public Domain

DUVAL, District Judge
(concurring). The purpose and object of the civil rights bill was a most laudable one. It was to secure to the newly enfranchised black race the same rights and privileges, civil and political, as were enjoyed by the whites. The first section of that act enumerates those rights. It provides that the colored race shall have the right “to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey, real and personal property, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.”
From a careful consideration of the act in question, my opinion is that no cause, civil or criminal, to which a black man is a party pending in a state court, can be properly removed into a court of the United States unless it affects the exercise and enjoyment of some one of the rights specified in the above section. I cannot think it was the intention of congress, by any provision in said act contained, to discriminate in favor of the black race as against the white, but simply to secure them in the same rights, civil and political, that the white race enjoyed. Both were to be left subject “to like punishment, pains and penalties, and to none other,” for violation of the criminal laws of the state. In other words, their rights and responsibilities, civil and criminal, were to be identically the same.
In this ease, the defendant has been indicted under the laws of the state of Texas, for the crime of bigamy and convicted thereof. The case has been transferred to this court by order of the supreme court of the state, simply upon the sworn statement of the defendant that, owing to a hostile public sentiment and prejudice against him, he cannot obtain justice. In my judgment, the civil rights bill does not authorize the transfer. It is not such a case as the act contemplates and is not embraced in its provisions.