Opinion of RUTLEDGE, J.

Throughout a long and varied course of application the sections have remained unimpaired on the score of vagueness in the crimes they denounce. From 1874 to today they have repelled all attacks proposed to invalidate them. None has succeeded. If time and uniform decision can give stability to statutes, these have acquired it.

Section 20 has not been much used, in direct application, until recently. There were however a number of early decisions.15 Of late the section has been applied more frequently, in considerable variety of situation, against varied and vigorous attack.16 In United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. at 321, as has been stated, this Court gave it clear-cut sanction. The opinion expressly repudiated any idea that the section, or § 19, is vitiated by ambiguity. Moreover, this was done in terms which leave no room to say that the decision was not focused upon that question." True, application to Fourteenth Amendment

15 United States v. Rhodes, 27 Fed. Cas. 785, No. 16,151; United States v. Jackson, 26 Fed. Cas. 563, No. 15,459; United States v. Buntin, 10 F. 730; cf. United States v. Stone, 188 F. 836, a prosecution under § 37 of the Criminal Code for conspiracy to violate § 20; cf., also 197 F. 483; United States v. Horton, 26 Fed. Cas. 375, No. 15,392. The constitutionality of the statute was sustained in the Rhodes case in 1866, and in the Jackson case in 1874. It was likewise sustained in In re Turner, 24 Fed. Cas. 337, No. 14,247 (1867); Smith v. Moody, 26 Ind. 299 (1866).

16 Cf. the authorities cited infra at note 25.

17 Referring to § 20, the Court said: "The generality of the section, made applicable as it is to deprivations of any constitutional right, does not obscure its meaning or impair its force within the scope of its application, which is restricted by its terms to deprivations which are willfully inflicted by those acting under color of any law, statute and the like." 313 U. S. at 328.

Concerning § 19, also involved, the Court pointed to the decisions in Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651, and United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383, cf. note 22, and commented: "... the Court found no uncertainty or ambiguity in the statutory language, obviously devised to protect the citizen 'in the free exercise or enjoyment of any

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rights was reserved because the question was raised for the first time in the Government's brief filed here. 313 U. S. at 329. But the statute was sustained in application to a vast range of rights secured by the Constitution, apart from the reserved segment, as the opinion's language and the single reservation itself attest. The ruling, thus broad, could not have been inadvertent. For it was repeated concerning both sections, broadly, forcefully, and upon citation of long-established authority. And this was done in response to a vigorous dissent which made the most of the point of vagueness.18 The point was flatly, and deliberately, rejected. The Court could not have been blinded by other issues to the import of this one.

The Classic decision thus cannot be put aside in this case. Nor can it be demonstrated that the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment are more numerous or more dubious than the aggregate encompassed by other

right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution,' and concerned itself with the question whether the right to participate in choosing a representative is so secured. Such is our function here." 313 U. S. at 321. The opinion stated further: "The suggestion that § 19 . . . is not sufficiently specific to be deemed applicable to primary elections, will hardly bear examination. Section 19 speaks neither of elections nor of primaries. In unambiguous language it protects 'any right or privilege secured by the Constitution,' a phrase which... extends to the right of the voter to have his vote counted . . . as well as to numerous other constitutional rights which are wholly unrelated to the choice of a representative in Congress," citing United States v. Waddell, 112 U. S. 76; Logan v. United States, 144 U. S. 263; In re Quarles, 158 U. S. 532; Motes v. United States, 178 U. S. 458; Guinn v. United States, 238 U. S. 347. Cf. note 18.

18 The dissenting opinion did not urge that §§ 19 and 20 are wholly void for ambiguity, since it put to one side cases involving discrimination for race or color as "plainly outlawed by the Fourteenth Amendment," as to which it was said, "Since the constitutional mandate is plain, there is no reason why § 19 or § 20 should not be applicable." However it was thought "no such unambiguous mandate" had been given by the constitutional provisions relevant in the Classic case. 313 U. S. at 332.

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constitutional provisions. Certainly "the equal protection of the laws," guaranteed by the Amendment, is not more vague and indefinite than many rights protected by other commands.19 The same thing is true of "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." The Fifth Amendment contains a due process clause as broad in its terms restricting national power as the Fourteenth is of state power.20 If § 20 (with § 19) is valid in general coverage of other constitutional rights, it cannot be void in the less sweeping application to Fourteenth Amendment rights. If it is valid to assure the rights "plainly and directly" secured by other provisions, it is equally valid to protect those "plainly and directly" secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, including the expressly guaranteed rights not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. If in fact there could be any difference among the various rights protected, in view of the history it would be that the section applies more clearly to Fourteenth Amendment rights than to others. Its phrases "are all phrases of large generalities. But they are not generalities of unillumined vagueness; they are generalities circumscribed by history and appropriate to the largeness of the problems of government with which they were concerned." Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, concurring opinion, p. 413.

Historically, the section's function and purpose have been to secure rights given by the Amendment. From the Amendment's adoption until 1874, it was Fourteenth Amendment legislation. Surely when in that year the section was expanded to include other rights these were

19 Cf. note 18.

20 Whether or not the two are coextensive in limitation of federal and state power, respectively, there is certainly a very broad correlation in coverage, and it hardly could be maintained that one is confined by more clear-cut boundaries than the other, although differences in meandering of the boundaries may exist.

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not dropped out. By giving the citizen additional security in the exercise of his voting and other political rights, which was the section's effect, unless the Classic case falls, Congress did not take from him the protection it previously afforded (wholly apart from the prohibition of different penalties)" against deprivation of such rights on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude, or repeal the prior safeguard of civil rights.

To strike from the statute the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, but at the same time to leave within its coverage the vast area bounded by other constitutional provisions, would contradict both reason and history. No logic but one which nullifies the historic foundations of the Amendment and the section could support such an emasculation. There should be no judicial hack work cutting out some of the great rights the Amendment secures but leaving in others. There can be none excising all protected by the Amendment, but leaving

21 The Court's opinion in the Classic case treated this clause of § 20, cf. note 12, as entirely distinct from the preceding clauses, stating that "the qualification with respect to alienage, color and race, refers only to differences in punishment and not to deprivations of any rights or privileges secured by the Constitution," (emphasis added) as was thought to be evidenced by the grammatical structure of the section and "the necessities of the practical application of its provisions." 313 U. S. 326,

The "pains and penalties" provision is clearly one against discrimination. It does not follow that the qualification as to alienage, color and race does not also refer to the "deprivation of any rights or privileges" clause, though not in an exclusive sense. No authority for the contrary dictum was cited. History here would seem to outweigh doubtful grammar, since, as § 20 originally appeared in the Civil Rights Act, the qualification as to "color or race" (alienage was added later) seems clearly applicable to its entire prohibition. Although the section is not exclusively a discrimination statute, it would seem clearly, in the light of its history, to include discrimination for alienage, color or race among the prohibited modes of depriving persons of rights or privileges.

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every other given by the Constitution intact under the statute's aegis.

All that has been said of § 20 applies with equal force to § 19. It had an earlier more litigious history, firmly establishing its validity.22 It also has received recent ap

22 Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651 (1884); United States v. Waddell, 112 U. S. 76 (1884); Logan v. United States, 144 U. S. 263 (1892); In re Quarles and Butler, 158 U. S. 532 (1895); Motes v. United States, 178 U. S. 458 (1900); United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383 (1915); United States v. Morris, 125 F. 322 (1903); United States v. Lackey, 99 F. 952 (1900), reversed on other grounds, 107 F. 114, cert. denied, 181 U. S. 621.

In United States v. Mosley, supra, as is noted in the text, the Court summarily disposed of the question of validity, stating that the section's constitutionality "is not open to question." 238 U. S. at 386. Cf. note 17. The Court was concerned with implied repeal, but stated: "But § 6 [the antecedent of § 19 in the Enforcement Act] being devoted, as we have said, to the protection of all Federal rights from conspiracies against them... Just as the Fourteenth Amendment . . . was adopted with a view to the protection of the colored race but has been found to be equally important in its application to the rights of all, § 6 had a general scope and used general words that have become the most important . . . The section now begins with sweeping general words. Those words always were in the act, and the present form gives them a congressional interpretation. Even if that interpretation would not have been held correct in an indictment under § 6, which we are far from intimating, and if we cannot interpret the past by the present, we cannot allow the past so far to affect the present as to deprive citizens of the United States of the general protection which on its face § 19 most reasonably affords." 238 U. S. at 387-388. (Emphasis added.) The dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Lamar raised no question of the section's validity. It maintained that Congress had not included or had removed protection of voting rights from the section, leaving only civil rights within its coverage. 238 U. S. at 390.

The cases holding that the Fourteenth Amendment and § 19 do not apply to infractions of constitutional rights involving no state action recognize and often affirm the section's applicability to wrongful action by state officials which infringes them: United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542 (1876); Hodges v. United States, 203 U. S. 1 (1906); United States v. Powell, 212 U. S. 564 (1909), see also 151 F.