The Week

The Compleat Candidate, or, Just a Soupçon of Chervil on Mine, Mabel: “My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce and mayonnaise on toasted bread with lots of catsup on the side. Another favorite is a toasted peanut butter, cheese and bacon sandwich, orifIamina hurry just peanut butter and jelly. Also I like peanut butter and cheese on crackers. Give me the crunchy or the smooth, I’m not fussy. In other words, I just love peanut butter.”—Hubert H. Humphrey, writing in reply to a letter from the Georgia Peanut Princess. Quoted in Monday, June 12, 1972.

The Nixon Court has upheld, 6 to 3, the individual’s right of private association. The ruling came out of a case involving K. Leroy Irvis, the black majority leader of the Pennsylvania House, who was refused restaurant service at a Moose lodge (even though he was the guest of a member). Irvis argued he had been denied equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment and that Pennsylvania’s granting the lodge a liquor license constituted “state action,” thus putting it under the constitutional mandate not to discriminate. The Court disagreed on both counts. Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion (Justices Douglas, Brennan and Marshall dissented) stating that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to private behavior and that for the state to deny all services to a private facility because of its membership practices would “utterly emasculate the distinction between private as distinguished from state conduct.” The decision significantly checks the Warren Court’s expansion of the “state action” doctrine.

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The Compleat Candidate, or, Just a Soupçon of Chervil on Mine, Mabel: “My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce and mayonnaise on toasted bread with lots of catsup on the side. Another favorite is a toasted peanut butter, cheese and bacon sandwich, orifIamina hurry just peanut butter and jelly. Also I like peanut butter and cheese on crackers. Give me the crunchy or the smooth, I’m not fussy. In other words, I just love peanut butter.”—Hubert H. Humphrey, writing in reply to a letter from the Georgia Peanut Princess. Quoted in Monday, June 12, 1972.

The Nixon Court has upheld, 6 to 3, the individual’s right of private association. The ruling came out of a case involving K. Leroy Irvis, the black majority leader of the Pennsylvania House, who was refused restaurant service at a Moose lodge (even though he was the guest of a member). Irvis argued he had been denied equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment and that Pennsylvania’s granting the lodge a liquor license constituted “state action,” thus putting it under the constitutional mandate not to discriminate. The Court disagreed on both counts. Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion (Justices Douglas, Brennan and Marshall dissented) stating that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to private behavior and that for the state to deny all services to a private facility because of its membership practices would “utterly emasculate the distinction between private as distinguished from state conduct.” The decision significantly checks the Warren Court’s expansion of the “state action” doctrine.