Maryland Law Review
Volume 71, Issue 1
Involuntary Servitude, Public Accommodations Laws, and the Legacy of Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States
By Linda C. McClain [Full Text]
71 Md. L. Rev. 83 (2011).
This Article looks at two contrasting ways in which arguments about the Thirteenth Amendment’s declaration that “[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States” featured in the enactment of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, the case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the Act. First, the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude makes a brief appearance in Heart of Atlanta Motel as an unsuccessful basis on which the motel owner challenged Title II. A similar claim arose in Congress when some lawmakers argued that the Thirteenth Amendment posed an “insurmountable constitutional barrier” to a federal public accommodations law because it compelled service. The second role played by the Thirteenth Amendment (barely discernible in Heart of Atlanta Motel but more evident in the congressional debates over Title II) was as a constitutional base for a public accommodations law because denial of service on the basis of race is a badge of servitude and a vestige of slavery.
This Article examines how these contrasting ideas about the relationship between the Thirteenth Amendment and a public accommodations law—that it, on one hand, barred such a law, and, on the other, that it justified such a law—featured in Heart of Atlanta Motel and in the passage of Title II itself. Looking back at these contrasting invocations of the Thirteenth Amendment may be useful to contemporary examinations of congressional authority to secure freedom and equality, as well as to contemporary debates over the justifications for and proper scope of antidiscrimination laws, and what is at stake for persons protected by such laws and those challenging them.
Suggested citation: Linda C. McClain, Involuntary Servitude, Public Accommodations Laws, and the Legacy of Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 71 Md. L. Rev. 83 (2011).
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