Equal Protection Clause Case Study

Justice Stanley Matthews, writing for a unanimous court, struck down the ordinance. Matthews looked past the neutral language to strike down the ordinance as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. He found that the division between wood and brick buildings was an "arbitrary line." Moreover, whatever the intent of the law may have been, the administration of the ordinance was carried out "with a mind so unequal and oppressive as to amount to a practical denial by the state" of equal protection of the laws.

Matthews held that:
Though the law itself be fair on its face, and impartial in appliance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make