## Facts

- Berea College was a Kentucky-chartered, private college that historically educated Black and white students together.
- Kentucky enacted the Day Law (1904), making it unlawful for any person or corporation to operate a school where white and Black students were both received for instruction at the same place, with substantial fines for violations.
- A Madison County grand jury indicted Berea College for allowing both white and Black students to attend in violation of the statute.
- Berea was convicted and fined \$1,000.
- Kentucky’s highest court affirmed, reasoning that the state could limit the powers of a corporation it created and that integrated instruction in a private school was not a protected property right of a state-created corporation.
- Berea sought review, arguing the statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment and impaired its charter in violation of the Contract Clause.

## Issues

1. Whether Kentucky, consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, could prohibit a state-chartered corporation from operating an integrated school, even if similar restrictions on natural persons might be constitutionally different.
2. Whether applying the Day Law to Berea impaired the obligations of its charter in violation of the Contract Clause.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and fine in a 7–2 decision.
- The Court held that Kentucky could restrict the powers and privileges of corporations it created, including by forbidding a corporation from operating an integrated school.
- The Court treated the statute’s application to corporations as separable from any application to natural persons.
- The Court rejected the Contract Clause challenge, concluding Kentucky’s reserved power to amend corporate charters permitted the limitation and the statute did not defeat the charter’s object.

## Legal Principles

- A corporation is not necessarily entitled to all constitutional immunities enjoyed by natural persons; a state may withhold from its corporations privileges it could not constitutionally take from individuals.
- When a statute contains provisions applicable to persons and corporations, the corporate restriction may be sustained if separable from potentially invalid provisions affecting individuals.
- A state has broad authority to define, limit, and amend the powers of corporations it creates, subject to reserved-powers limitations.
- Under the reserved power to alter or amend corporate charters, a change is permissible if it does not defeat or substantially impair the object of the grant or vested rights; a generally applicable statute may operate as a charter amendment.
- A restriction that bars integrated attendance at the same place, while allowing education of both races by the same corporation in different localities, was treated as not defeating a charter authorizing education of “all persons.”

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Kentucky’s application of the Day Law to Berea College, reasoning that the state could limit the powers of its own corporate creation and that the statute, viewed as a permissible charter amendment, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment or the Contract Clause.


Berea Coll. v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45 (1908)