those against Stanley
and Nichols, were indictments for denying to persons of color the
accommodations of an inn or hotel; two of them, those against Ryan and
Singleton, were, one on information, the other on indictments, for
denying to individuals the privileges and accommodations of a theatre.
The information against Ryan was for refusing a colored person a seat
in the dress circle of McGuire's Theatre in San Francisco; and the
indictment against Singleton was for denying to another person, whose
color was not stated, the full enjoyment of the accommodation of the
theatre known as the Grand Opera House in New York.

The argument to show the culpability of the State was that in becoming
a business man or a corporation established by sanction of and
protected by the State, such a person or persons discriminating
against a citizen of color no longer acted in a private but in a
public capacity and in so doing affected an interest in violation of
the State by controlling, as in the case of slavery, an individual's
power of locomotion. The Civil Rights Bill was appropriate legislation
as defined by the Constitution to forbid any action by private persons
which "in the light of our history may reasonably be apprehended to
tend, on account of its being incidental to quasi public occupations,
to create an institution." The act of 1875 in prohibiting persons from
violating the rights of other persons to the full and equal enjoyment
of the accommodations of inns and public conveyances, for any reason
turning merely upon the race or color of the latter, partook of the
specific character of certain contemporaneous, solemn and effective
action by the United States to which it was a sequel and is
constitutional.

Giving the opinion of the court in Civil Rights Cases,[19] Mr. Justice
Bradley said that the Fourteenth Amendment on which this act of 1875
rested for its authority, if it had any authority at all, does not
invest Congress to legislate within the domain of State legislation or
in State action of the kind referred to in the Civil Rights Act. He
believed that the Fourteenth Amendment does not authorize Congress to
create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights.
He conceded that positive rights and privileges are secured by the
Fourteenth Amendment but only by prohibition against State laws and
State proceedings affecting those rights.[20] "Until some State law
has passed," he said, "or some State action