<P> In the United States, the year 1877 marked the end of Reconstruction and the start of the Gilded Age . The first truly landmark equal protection decision by the Supreme Court was Strauder v. West Virginia (1880). A black man convicted of murder by an all - white jury challenged a West Virginia statute excluding blacks from serving on juries . Exclusion of blacks from juries, the Court concluded, was a denial of equal protection to black defendants, since the jury had been "drawn from a panel from which the State has expressly excluded every man of (the defendant's) race ." At the same time, the Court explicitly allowed sexism and other types of discrimination, saying that states "may confine the selection to males, to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain ages, or to persons having educational qualifications . We do not believe the Fourteenth Amendment was ever intended to prohibit this...Its aim was against discrimination because of race or color ." </P> <P> The next important postwar case was the Civil Rights Cases (1883), in which the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was at issue . The Act provided that all persons should have "full and equal enjoyment of...inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of public amusement ." In its opinion, the Court explicated what has since become known as the "state action doctrine," according to which the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause apply only to acts done or otherwise "sanctioned in some way" by the state . Prohibiting blacks from attending plays or staying in inns was "simply a private wrong". Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented alone, saying, "I cannot resist the conclusion that the substance and spirit of the recent amendments of the Constitution have been sacrificed by a subtle and ingenious verbal criticism ." Harlan went on to argue that because (1) "public conveyances on land and water" use the public highways, and (2) innkeepers engage in what is "a quasi-public employment," and (3) "places of public amusement" are licensed under the laws of the states, excluding blacks from using these services was an act sanctioned by the state . A few years later, Justice Stanley Matthews wrote the Court's opinion in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886). In it the word "person" from the 14th Amendment's section has been given the broadest possible meaning by the U.S. Supreme Court: </P> <P> These provisions are universal in their application to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality, and the equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws . </P> <P> Thus, the Clause would not be limited to discrimination against African Americans, but would extend to other races, colors, and nationalities such as (in this case) legal aliens in the United States who are Chinese citizens . </P>

Primary clause of the fourteenth amendment that is used to extend civil rights