Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States |
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| Argued October 5, 1964 Decided December 14, 1964 |
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| Full case name | Heart of Atlanta Motel, Incorporated v. United States, et al. |
| Citations | 379 U.S. 241 (more)
85 S. Ct. 348; 13 L. Ed. 2d 258; 1964 U.S. LEXIS 2187; 1 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) ¶ 9712
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| Prior history | Judgment for defendant, 231 F. Supp. 393 (N.D. Ga. 1964); probable jurisdiction noted, 379 U.S. 803 (1964). |
| Subsequent history | None |
| Holding | |
| Congress did not unconstitutionally exceed its powers under the Commerce Clause by enacting Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations. Northern District of Georgia affirmed. | |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Clark, joined by Warren, Douglas, Harlan, Brennan, Stewart, White, Goldberg |
| Concurrence | Black |
| Concurrence | Douglas |
| Concurrence | Goldberg |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. art. I Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 |
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Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Commerce Clause gave the U.S. Congress power to force private businesses to abide by Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or national origin in public accommodations.
Background
This important case represented an immediate challenge to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark piece of civil rights legislation which represented the first comprehensive act by Congress on civil rights and race relations since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. For much of the 100 years preceding 1964, African Americans in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation, a system of racial separation which, while in name providing for "separate but equal" treatment of both white and African Americans, in deed provided inferior accommodation, services, and treatment for African Americans.
During the mid-20th century, partly as a result of cases such as Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932); Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950); NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958); Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960); and, most notably, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), public opinion began to turn against segregation. Despite the outcomes of these cases, segregation remained in full effect into the 1960s in parts of the southern United States, where the Heart of Atlanta Motel was located.
Case legacy
Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States has been cited in at least 690 other case decisions since its ruling, including multiple other Supreme Court cases. A notable example includes the 1997 case Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc. v. Town of Harrison, in which a summer camp in Maine that mainly serviced out-of-state residents fought against a state tax exemption statute that favored organizations that serviced state residents. The courts compared out-of-state campers staying at a summer camp to out-of-state residents occupying a hotel, deeming the camp a participant in interstate commerce. Another example is the 1966 case United States v. Guest, in which the courts ruled, due to the conspiratorial murder of Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn while he was traveling home, that forcefully depriving someone's right to travel is unconstitutional.
