Court Opinion

ID: 9419692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:03.844508+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:19.965633
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring.
The Railway Mail Association is a union of railway clerks. To operate as a union in New York it must obey *98the New York Civil Rights Law. That law prohibits such an organization from denying membership in the union by reason of race, color or creed, with all the economic consequences that such denial entails.
Apart from other objections, which are too unsubstantial to require consideration, it is urged that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes the State of New York from prohibiting racial and religious discrimination against those seeking employment. Elaborately to argue against this contention is to dignify a claim devoid of constitutional substance. Of course a State may leave abstention from such discriminations to the conscience of individuals. On the other hand, a State may choose to put its authority behind one of the cherished aims of American feeling by forbidding indulgence in racial or religious prejudice to another’s hurt. To use the Fourteenth Amendment as a sword against such State power would stultify that Amendment. Certainly the insistence by individuals on their private prejudices as to race, color or creed, in relations like those now before us, ought not to have a higher constitutional sanction than the determination of a State to extend the area of nondiscrimination beyond that which the Constitution itself exacts.