Tag Archives: Yick Wo v. Hopkins

Celebrate the anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment by watching our film Yick Wo and the Equal Protection Clause. Yick Wo was a Chinese immigrant who ran a laundry service in  San Francisco in the 19th century. He took his case against the city’s discriminatory licensing laws all the way to the Supreme Court, and in the process changed American constitutional history. For the first time, the Supreme Court defined the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and established that the amendment granted equal protection to all persons, not just citizens of the United States. Since Yick Wo was decided in 1886, it has been cited over 160 times by the Supreme Court.