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Constitutional Law Keyed to Choper
O’Shea v. Littleton
Citation:
414 U.S. 488 (1974)Facts
The plaintiffs, 17 black and 2 white residents of Cairo, Illinois, brought a class action against various officials including two state court judges, alleging systematic racial discrimination in the administration of criminal justice in Alexander County. The plaintiffs claimed that since the early 1960s, black citizens of Cairo had been actively seeking equality of opportunity and treatment, including through an economic boycott of local merchants they considered discriminatory. This allegedly generated antagonism from white citizens and officials. The complaint alleged that the defendant judges engaged in a pattern of discriminatory practices including: setting excessive bail according to an unofficial schedule without regard to individual circumstances; imposing harsher sentences on black defendants than white defendants; and requiring indigent defendants to pay for jury trials in city ordinance violation cases. The plaintiffs sought injunctive relief against these practices, but did not identify specific instances where named plaintiffs had personally suffered from these practices, nor did they seek damages from the judicial officers.
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