Desegregating Juries in the American Judicial System

The 1880 U.S. Supreme Court case Strauder v. West Virginia was a landmark decision in the development of civil rights law and the American judicial system. It addressed whether a state could constitutionally exclude individuals from jury service based solely on race, and it played a critical role in interpreting the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Facts of the Case

The case arose when Taylor Strauder, an African-American man, was convicted of murder by an all-white jury in West Virginia. At the time, state law explicitly limited jury service to white males. Strauder argued that this exclusion violated the 14th Amendment, which had been adopted after the Civil War to ensure equal legal protections for formerly enslaved people and other racial minorities.

The Supreme Court ruled in Strauder’s favor, holding that laws barring Black citizens from jury service were unconstitutional. The court reasoned that the equal protection clause was designed to protect African-Americans from discriminatory legislation and that excluding them from juries branded them as inferior by denying defendants the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. This decision marked one of the earliest instances in which the court actively enforced the 14th Amendment to prevent racial discrimination by the states.

A Lasting Impact

Strauder v. West Virginia established that jury selection processes must be free from explicit racial discrimination. While the ruling did not immediately eliminate discriminatory practices — such as informal exclusion or later tactics such as peremptory challenges — it laid the constitutional groundwork for later decisions, including Batson v. Kentucky (1986), which further restricted race-based jury selection.

In the broader scope of civil rights law, Strauder affirmed that equality before the law includes participation in the justice system itself, not merely equal treatment as defendants. The case helped shape modern equal protection jurisprudence and reinforced the judiciary’s role in confronting racial discrimination, making it a foundational precedent in the ongoing pursuit of civil rights in the United States.

Learn more:

U.S. Supreme Court  (opens in new browser window)

The National Constitution Center  (opens in new browser window)

Saint Louis University Law Journal (PDF)  (opens in new browser window)

NYU Law Review  (opens in new browser window)

« Back to Explore Law