Yick Wo V. Hopkins - Legacy

Legacy

Yick Wo had little application shortly after the decision. In fact, it was not long after that the Court developed the "separate but equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), in practice allowing discriminatory treatment of African Americans. Yick Wo was never applied at the time to Jim Crow laws which, although also racially neutral, were in practice discriminatory against blacks. However, by the 1950s, the Warren Court used the principle established in Yick Wo to strike down several attempts by states and municipalities in the Deep South to limit the political rights of blacks. Yick Wo has been cited in well over 150 Supreme Court cases since it was decided.

Yick Wo is cited in Hirabayashi v. United States (320 US 81, 1943) to recognize that: "Distinctions between citizens solely based because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. For that reason, legislative classification or discrimination based on race alone has often been held to be a denial of equal protection." However, the US Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Gordon Hirabayashi, the Japanese American who tested the curfew law and refused to register for the forced internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II.

In San Francisco there is a public school named Yick Wo Alternative Elementary School in honor of Yick Wo.