Yee Gee v. City & County of San Francisco

This is a bill by plaintiff, a native-born citizen of the United States, of the Chinese or Mongolian race,, now and for many years owning and conducting a public laundry in the city of San Francisco, to restrain the enforcement of an ordinance (No. 3300 N. S.) of its board of supervisors, approved June 27, 1915, regulating laundries therein, and particularly of certain provisions thereof, on the ground that the same violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and that its enforcement will deny to plaintiff the equal protection of the law, and deprive him of his property and property rights without due process.

The general assignment of invalidity, involving the operation of the ordinance as a whole, is that it is unreasonably and arbitrarily discriminatory; it being alleged that it was passed and adopted for the sole purpose of interfering with and injuring the laundry business as carried on by persons of the plaintiff’s race, of which a large number are alleged to be engaged in the business in said city, and in effect to drive them out of the business. The special features assailed are:

*759 (1) Certain provisions which it is claimed commit to the board of…