ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the race-discrimination issues raised by the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause. The exact words of the clause, however, guarantee equal protection to all "persons," not simply to ex-slaves or black persons, and, over time, the narrow and spindly equal-protection leg of Slaughter-House has grown into a substantial pillar upholding the protection of civil rights. For the moment, the point to be stressed is that the Civil Rights Cases limited the concept of equal protection to a narrow class of cases and left entirely to the states the task of prohibiting private racial discrimination. The prohibitions of the Equal Protection Clause are limited to "state action" only. Since the Civil Rights Cases, the Court has consistently held that private discriminations are not prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment; only applicable state laws, it has ruled, can address this problem.
