United States v. Cruikshank

United States v. Cruikshank
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 30 – June 24, 1875 Decided March 27, 1876
Full case name	United States v. Cruikshank, et al.
Citations	92 U.S. 542 (more) 2 Otto 542; 23 L. Ed. 588; 1875 U.S. LEXIS 1794
Holding
The right of assembly under the First Amendment and the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment are only applicable to the federal government, not the states or private actors.
Court membership
Chief Justice Morrison Waite Associate Justices Nathan Clifford · Noah H. Swayne Samuel F. Miller · David Davis Stephen J. Field · William Strong Joseph P. Bradley · Ward Hunt
Case opinions
Majority	Waite, joined by Swayne, Miller, Field, Strong
Dissent	Clifford, joined by Davis, Bradley, Hunt
Abrogated by
De Jonge v. Oregon (1937) (in part) McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) (in part)

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court^[1] ruling that the U.S. Bill of Rights did not limit the power of private actors or state governments despite the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reversed the federal criminal convictions for the civil rights violations committed in aid of anti-Reconstruction murders. Decided during the Reconstruction Era, the case represented a major defeat for federal efforts to protect the civil rights of African Americans.

The case developed from the strongly contested 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election and the subsequent Colfax massacre, in which dozens of black people and three white people were killed. Federal charges were brought against several whites using the Enforcement Act of 1870, which prohibited two or more people from conspiring to deprive anyone of their constitutional rights. Charges included hindering the freedmen's First Amendment right to freely assemble and their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Morrison Waite reversed the convictions of the defendants, judging that the plaintiffs had to rely on Louisiana state courts for protection. Waite ruled that neither the First Amendment nor the Second Amendment limited the powers of state governments or individuals. He further ruled that the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limited the lawful actions of state governments, but not of individuals. The decision left African Americans in the South at the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments dominated by white Democratic legislatures, and allowed groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to continue to use paramilitary force to suppress black voting.

Cruikshank was the first case to come before the Supreme Court that involved a possible violation of the Second Amendment.^[2] Decades after Cruikshank, the Supreme Court began incorporating the Bill of Rights to apply to state governments. The Court incorporated the First Amendment's freedom of assembly in De Jonge v. Oregon (1937), while the Second Amendment was incorporated in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010).