''Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital'', 323 F.2d 959 (4th Cir. 1963), was a federal case, reaching the

Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (in case citations, 4th Cir.) is a federal court located in Richmond, Virginia, with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: * District of Maryland ...

, which held that "

separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...

" racial segregation in publicly funded hospitals was a violation of

equal protection The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equa ...

under the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...

Background

George Simkins, Jr. was a dentist and

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

leader in

Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte and Raleigh, the 69th-most populous city in the Un ...

. One of his patients, an African-American person, developed an

abscessed tooth A dental abscess is a localized collection of pus associated with a tooth. The most common type of dental abscess is a periapical abscess, and the second most common is a periodontal abscess. In a periapical abscess, usually the origin is a bac ...

and Simkins felt that the patient required medical treatment, but none of the local hospitals that would accept African-American patients had space for the patient. With the assistance of the NAACP and other medical professionals in the area, Simkins filed suit, arguing that because the

Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, also known as Moses Cone Hospital, is a 517-bed tertiary care facility located in Greensboro, North Carolina. The hospital opened in 1953 on North Elm Street as a 310-bed community hospital. Moses Cone Hospit ...

and Wesley Long Hospital had received $2.8 million through the

Hill–Burton Act The Hospital Survey and Construction Act (), commonly known as the Hill–Burton Act, is a U.S. federal law passed in 1946, during the 79th United States Congress. It was sponsored by Senator Harold Burton of Ohio and Senator Lister Hill of Alab ...

that they were subject to the Constitutional guarantee of

. The suit was filed in February 1962. At district court, the suit was dismissed, the court finding that there was no involvement of the state or federal government. This ruling was appealed to the

in November 1963.

Decision

In a 3-2 decision, the Fourth Circuit overturned the district ruling, looking to whether the hospitals and the government were so intertwined by funding and law that the hospitals' "activities are also the activities of those governments and performed under their aegis without the private body necessarily becoming either their instrumentality or their agent in a strict sense." The Court held that to be the case. The Court then found the provision for segregated "

" facilities to be unconstitutional, and it struck down that portion of the Hill–Burton Act. A dissent, authored by Judge Haynsworth and joined by Judge Boreman, argued that the hospitals' operations involved no "state action". They noted that hospitals had preceded the creation of the Hill–Burton Act.4th circuit opinion at Leagle
/ref> The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, who denied

certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...

. As a result, the Appeals court ruling stood, but was only

precedent A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great valu ...

within the jurisdiction of the Fourth Circuit—Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Subsequent developments

In 1964, Title VI of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...

banned discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin for any agency receiving state or federal funding.

References

Sources

External links

* {{caselaw source , case = ''Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital'', 323 F.2d 959 (4th Cir. 1963) , courtlistener =https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/262144/g-c-simkins-jr-a-w-blount-jr-and-united-states-of-america/ , googlescholar = https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17150683833301396875 , justia =https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/323/959/150563/ , leagle =https://www.leagle.com/decision/19631282323f2d95911029 , openjurist =https://openjurist.org/323/f2d/959 United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit cases 1963 in United States case law Civil rights movement case law History of Greensboro, North Carolina United States equal protection case law United States racial desegregation case law Healthcare in Greensboro, North Carolina Cone Health United States lawsuits