During the 1850’s and 1860’s, the state of California singled out Chinese immigrants for capitation taxes, which were assessed on individual immigrants. These taxes were subsequently declared unconstitutional by California’s state supreme court as interfering with foreign commerce.
In 1849, the first Chinese laborers arrived in California, where they encountered great local resentment. Known derogatorily as “coolies,” they were subjected to various discriminatory laws. In 1852, for example, California imposed
In the 1857 case of
In June, 1862, a Chinese laborer named Lin Sing brought suit against the San Francisco tax collector Washburn for a refund of the capitation taxes he had paid for the previous two months. After a magistrate and local court ruled against him, Lin Sing appealed to the state supreme court in what was apparently a concerted effort by the state’s Chinese community to resist discrimination. In its July, 1862, ruling in
The history of these capitation tax cases demonstrates several things. The great hostility to Chinese in California immediately expressed itself in a host of discriminatory laws and taxes. The Chinese community made recourse to the courts to fight this discrimination. California’s supreme court showed itself sympathetic to the lawsuits and interpreted the foreign commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution in the most expansive manner in order to void discriminatory taxes. Although racial discrimination at the time was not illegal, the court behaved in a far-sighted manner by linking hostility against a particular ethnic group to other constitutional violations. Nevertheless California continued to enact discriminatory laws against the Chinese, many of which were beyond attack under then current jurisprudence. In addition, as the federal government assumed exclusive control over immigration during the 1880’s, it enacted its own discriminatory laws, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, designed to stop Chinese immigration to the United States.
McClain, Charles. Chinese Immigrants and American Law. New York: Garland, 1994. _______. In Search of Equality. The Chinese Struggle Against Inequality in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Motomura, Hiroshi. Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Sandmeyer, Elmer Clarence. The Anti-Chinese Movement in California. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
California gold rush
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
Economic consequences of immigration
Foreign miner taxes