## Facts

- A federal grand jury in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Western District of Tennessee indicted R. G. Harris (the Crockett County sheriff) and others under Revised Statutes § 5519, derived from the 1871 Force Act.
- The indictment charged that defendants conspired to deprive four named citizens of the “equal protection of the laws.”
- The four individuals had been lawfully arrested by a deputy sheriff and were in his custody; under Tennessee law they were entitled to protection from violence while detained.
- Defendants allegedly entered the jail as an armed group, seized the prisoners, beat them, and one prisoner died.
- Defendants demurred, asserting § 5519 was unconstitutional.
- The circuit judges divided on the legal questions and certified them to the Supreme Court under the certificate-of-division procedure.

## Issues

1. Whether the Supreme Court had jurisdiction to answer the certified questions despite technical defects in the certificate of division.
2. Whether Revised Statutes § 5519, criminalizing private conspiracies to deprive persons of equal protection, was constitutional enforcement legislation under the Fourteenth Amendment (and related Reconstruction Amendments) absent state action.

## Decision

- The Court held it had jurisdiction; the certificate’s omission of an express statement that certification was requested by a party did not defeat jurisdiction when such a request could be fairly inferred.
- The Court held § 5519 unconstitutional as beyond Congress’s enforcement power under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Justice Harlan dissented only on the jurisdictional question and did not reach the merits.
- Because the statute underlying the indictment was invalid, the federal prosecution could not proceed on that basis.

## Legal Principles

- The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause restrains states; it does not create federal authority to punish private individuals for depriving others of equal protection as such.
- Congress’s enforcement power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment is corrective and directed at state laws, state action, or state failures to provide equal protection, rather than a general power to criminalize private wrongs.
- Federal legislation enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment must be tied to state action; a statute aimed exclusively at private conduct, without reference to state law or its administration by state officials, exceeds congressional authority.

## Conclusion

The Court concluded that Congress may not, under the Fourteenth Amendment, make purely private conspiracies to assault or kill into federal crimes simply because the conduct is framed as denying “equal protection,” reaffirming a state-action limit on federal civil-rights enforcement.


United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629 (1883)