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The background to the Bates case indicates that Congress relied on the commerce power in Article I, Sec 8 as the basis for the Equal Access Act rather than on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This is because early Supreme Court cases determined that the Fourteenth Amendment only protects against discrimination based on action by the state, the so-called state action requirement, since the language of the amendment says in part that “No state shall….” Discrimination by private individuals is thus generally outside the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. By basing the Equal Access Act on the commerce power Congress hoped to avoid this restriction.
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964), mentioned in Bates and discussed later in the Epstein and Walker text book, addresses this problem in the context of commerce and racial discrimination. Katzenbach v. McClung ( (Links to an external site.)1964) was a companion case to Heart of Atlanta. Heart of Atlanta Motel ruled that Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a valid exercise of Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce insofar as it requires hotels and motels to serve customers without regard to their race or color. Kazenbach v. McClung addressed the related issue of whether the CRA of 1964 applies also to restaurants, like Ollie’s Barbecue in Birmingham, Alabama, which serve a substantial portion of food which has moved through the channels of interstate commerce. These cases build on previous Supreme Court decisions interpreting Congress’ commerce power under Article I, Sec. 8, and other cases decided since then expand upon the meaning, and sometimes limits, of that power.
