Chy Lung v. Freeman

Immigration from China to the Western United States, particularly California, had picked up in the mid-19 century, starting with the California Gold Rush. There was hostility to Chinese immigration among many California natives, particularly among labor unions representing white laborers. The government of California passed a number of laws to make the state unwelcoming to Chinese immigration, including the Anti-Coolie Act of 1862.

The United States federal government, on the other hand, was pursuing a more friendly approach to the Chinese government. In 1868, the governments of the United States and China agreed on the Burlingame Treaty, in which China was granted most favored nation status for trade, and both countries would freely permit immigration of the citizens of the other country but with no promise of a path to citizenship. Indeed, the Naturalization Act of 1870 explicitly restricted naturalization to blacks and whites, but citizenship at birth was still open to all, as would subsequently be affirmed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

In 1875, the State of California passed a statute authorizing the immigration commissioner to inspect passengers arriving in California at a cost of 75 cents per inspection, which was levied on the passenger, and giving him the authority to deny entry to passengers suspected of being lewd and debauched. Those suspected could thus be allowed entry if the captain of the ship paid a bond for them.

Two other United States states, New York and Louisiana, had similar statutes that were challenged at around the same time.

• Henderson v. Mayor of City of New York, 92 U.S. 259 (1875): A lawsuit by the owners of the steamship Ethiopia from Great Britain, which had arrived at New York City, challenged statutes of New York and Louisiana that required the owner of a ship to post a bond for landing immigrants to cover indemnities if they proved to need state assistance. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, arguing that the power to set immigration policy rested with the federal government and set a requirement of a bond constituted a sufficient policy with significant impact on international movement as to be the exclusive domain of the federal government.[7][8]
• Commissioners of Immigration v. North German Lloyd

There were 22 women from China, including Chy Lung, among the passengers on the steamer Japan that journeyed from China to San Francisco, arriving in 1875.[9] The immigration commissioner examined the passengers and identified Chy Lung and the other women as "lewd and debauched women." The captain of the ship had the option of paying a $500 bond per woman to allow her to land, with the bond having the ostensible purpose to "indemnify all the counties, towns, and cities of California against liability for her support or maintenance for two years." The captain, however, refused to pay the bond and detained the women on board. They sued out a writ of habeas corpus, which led to them being moved into the custody of the Sheriff of the County and City of San Francisco, where they stayed, awaiting deportation upon the return of Japan, which had already left on its trip to China.[2]

The women refused to be deported to China and appealed the decision to deport them. The California High Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute used to deny them entry and upheld their deportation. They appealed the decision in the US Supreme Court.[2] That was the first case to appear before the United States Supreme Court that involved a Chinese litigant.[9]

Justice Stephen Johnson Field ordered the release of all the women from the Sheriff's custody. However, Chy Lung still pressed the case in the Supreme Court, seeking to test the constitutionality of the statute that had been used to imprison her and her companions.[2]

On October 1, 1875, the Supreme Court decided unanimously in favor of Chy Lung. Its primary argument was that the US government, rather than the states, was in charge of immigration policy and diplomatic relations with other nations and so it was not up to the state of California to impose restrictions on Chinese immigration. The Supreme Court also noted that thise action by the government of California could jeopardize foreign relations for the US government insofar as it ran afoul of treaty obligations.[2][3][10]

The court noted that states could make reasonable and necessary regulations concerning paupers and convicted criminals but that the regulation went far beyond that and was also extortionary.[3]

The court was also critical of the State of California, the Commissioner of Immigration and the Sheriff of San Francisco for not presenting any arguments on their behalf in the case.[2]

The court was also critical of the lack of due process governing the immigration commissioner's decisions to mark particular immigrants as lewd and debauched.[2]

Around the time that Chy Lung v. Freeman was decided, the US government passed its first official policy significantly restricting immigration, along lines similar to the California statute that had been deemed unconstitutional. The law, called the Page Act of 1875, prohibited the entry of immigrants considered "undesirable," a category intended to include forced laborers and female prostitutes and was applied to people of Chinese citizenship and descent. The bar on female prostitutes was the most heavily enforced aspect of the Act. The implementation mechanics involved prescreening of Chinese women in Hong Kong to ascertain their good moral character and certify that they were not prostitutes. That was very different from the operation of the California statute, which involved inspection by the immigration commissioner after the ship had landed.

In subsequent years, with the Angell Treaty of 1880 and Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), the US government would significantly restrict Chinese immigration. Later decisions on cases litigated by Chinese litigants challenging US immigration enforcement tended to be decided against the litigants and in favor of the federal government (the most important of them, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Case, was Chae Chan Ping v. United States). However, insofar as these decisions deferred to the federal government's authority, they were not inconsistent with the decision in Chy Lung v. Freeman.