Ku Klux Klan Act

The Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, now codified and known as 42 U.S.C. § 1983, is one of the most important federal statutes in force in the United States. It was originally enacted a few years after the American Civil War, along with the 1870 Force Act. One of the main reasons behind its passage was to protect southern blacks from the Ku Klux Klan by providing a civil remedy for abuses then being committed in the South. The statute has been subjected to only minor changes since then, but has been the subject of voluminous interpretation by courts.

Section 1983 does not create new civil rights. Instead, it allows individuals to sue state actors in federal courts for civil rights violations. To gain federal jurisdiction, i.e., access to a court, the individual must point to a federal civil right that has been allegedly violated. These rights are encoded in the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes.

The statute reads:

Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, Suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.

For most of its history, the Act had very little effect. The legal community did not think the statute served as a check on state officials, and did not often litigate under the statute. However, this changed in 1961 when the Supreme Court of the United States decided Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167. In that case, the Court articulated three purposes that underlay the statute: "1) 'to override certain kinds of state laws'; 2) to provide 'a remedy where state law was inadequate'; and 3) to provide 'a federal remedy where the state remedy, though adequate in theory, was not available in practice.'" Blum & Urbonya, Section 1983 Litigation, p. 2 (Federal Judicial Center, 1998) (quoting Monroe v. Pape). Pape opened the door for renewed interest in Section 1983.

Now the statute stands as one of the most powerful authorities with which federal courts may protect those whose rights are deprived. It is most often used to sue police and other state officials who allegedly deprived a plaintiff of Constitutional rights within the criminal justice system.

History

Benjamin Franklin Butler wrote the 1871 Klan Act.

Legislation

Main article: Ku Klux Klan

The Klan Act was originally passed because some governors in the South during Reconstruction were unwilling or unable to act against violence by the Ku Klux Klan. In lynching cases, whites were almost never indicted by all-white coroner's juries, and even when there was an indictment, all-white trial juries were extremely unlikely to vote for conviction. In many states, use of black militiamen would ignite a race war. When Republican governor William Woods Holden of North Carolina called out the state militia against the Klan in 1870, the result was a backlash culminating with his impeachment in 1871. Many Southern states had already passed anti-Klan legislation, and, in February 1871, former Union general Benjamin Franklin Butler, a US House of Representatives member from Massachusetts (who was widely reviled by Southern whites), introduced federal legislation modeled on these acts. Many politicians at the national level professed doubt that the Klan even existed, but the tide was turned in favor of the bill by the governor of South Carolina's appeal for federal troops, and by reports of a riot and massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi courthouse, during which a black state representative was forced to hide in the woods in order to escape a likely death.

In 1871, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation, the Ku Klux Klan Act.

Use during Reconstruction

Main article: Reconstruction

Under the Klan Act during Reconstruction, federal troops were used rather than state militias to enforce the law, and Klansmen were prosecuted in federal court, where juries were often predominantly black (reflecting the local population). Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned, and habeas corpus was suspended in nine counties in South Carolina. These efforts were so successful that the Klan was destroyed in South Carolina and decimated throughout the rest of the country, where it had already been in decline for several years. The Klan was not to exist again until its recreation in 1915,, but it had already achieved many of its goals in the South, such as denying voting rights to Southern blacks.

Later use

Although some provisions were ruled unconstitutional in 1882, the Force Act and the Klan Act have been invoked in later civil rights conflicts, including the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo; and in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, 506 U.S. 263 (1993), which the court ruled that "The first clause of 1985(3) does not provide a federal cause of action against persons obstructing access to abortion clinics."

Today, the Civil Rights Act can be invoked whenever a state or local government official violates a federally guaranteed right. The most common use today is to redress violations of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Such lawsuits concern false arrest and police brutality, most notably in the Rodney King case.

External links

• Full text of the Klan Act of 1871 (simplified version)

• Text of Civil Rights Act of 1871 as codified- 42 U.S. Code 21 §§1983, 1988
• 18 U.S.C. § 242 is "the criminal analog of 1983." Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 428 (1976).