383 U.S. 745 (1966)

UNITED STATES
v.
GUEST ET AL.

No. 65.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued November 9, 1965. Decided March 28, 1966. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF GEORGIA.

*746 Solicitor General Marshall argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Assistant Attorney General Doar, Louis F. Claiborne and David Rubin.

Charles J. Bloch, by appointment of the Court, 380 U. S. 969, argued the cause and filed a brief for appellee Lackey.

James E. Hudson argued the cause and filed a brief for appellees Guest et al.

MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.

The six defendants in this case were indicted by a United States grand jury in the Middle District of *747 Georgia for criminal conspiracy in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 241 (1964 ed.). That section provides in relevant part:

"If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;

.....

"They shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

In five numbered paragraphs, the indictment alleged a single conspiracy by the defendants to deprive Negro citizens of the free exercise and enjoyment of several specified rights secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States.^[1] The defendants moved to dismiss *748 the indictment on the ground that it did not charge an offense under the laws of the United States. The District Court sustained the motion and dismissed the indictment as to all defendants and all numbered paragraphs of the indictment. 246 F. Supp. 475.

*749 The United States appealed directly to this Court under the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U. S. C. § 3731.^[2] We postponed decision of the question of our jurisdiction to the hearing on the merits. 381 U. S. 932. It is now apparent that this Court does not have jurisdiction to decide one of the issues sought to be raised on this direct appeal. As to the other issues, however, our appellate jurisdiction is clear, and for the reasons that follow, we reverse the judgment of the District Court. As in United States v. Price, post, p. 787, decided today, we deal here with issues of statutory construction, not with issues of constitutional power.

I.

The first numbered paragraph of the indictment, reflecting a portion of the language of § 201 (a) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000a (a) (1964 ed.), alleged that the defendants conspired to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate Negro citizens in the free exercise and enjoyment of:

"The right to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of motion picture theaters, restaurants, and other places of public accommodation."^[3]

*750 The District Court held that this paragraph of the indictment failed to state an offense against rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States. The court found a fatal flaw in the failure of the paragraph to include an allegation that the acts of the defendants were motivated by racial discrimination, an allegation the court thought essential to charge an interference with rights secured by Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.^[4] The court went on to say that, in any event, 18 U. S. C. § 241 is not an available sanction to protect rights secured by that title because § 207 (b) of the 1964 Act, 42 U. S. C. § 2000a-6 (b) (1964 ed.), specifies that the remedies provided in Title II itself are *751 to be the exclusive means of enforcing the rights the title secures.^[5]

A direct appeal to this Court is available to the United States under the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U. S. C. § 3731, from "a decision or judgment . . . dismissing any indictment. . . or any count thereof, where such decision or judgment is based upon the . . . construction of the statute upon which the indictment . . . is founded." In the present case, however, the District Court's judgment as to the first paragraph of the indictment was based, at least alternatively, upon its determination that this paragraph was defective as a matter of pleading. Settled principles of review under the Criminal Appeals Act therefore preclude our review of the District Court's judgment on this branch of the indictment. In United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188, Chief Justice Hughes, speaking for a unanimous Court, set out these principles with characteristic clarity:

"The established principles governing our review are these: (1) Appeal does not lie from a judgment which rests on the mere deficiencies of the indictment *752 as a pleading, as distinguished from a construction of the statute which underlies the indictment. (2) Nor will an appeal lie in a case where the District Court has considered the construction of the statute but has also rested its decision upon the independent ground of a defect in pleading which is not subject to our examination. In that case we cannot disturb the judgment and the question of construction becomes abstract. (3) This Court must accept the construction given to the indictment by the District Court as that is a matter we are not authorized to review . . . ." 308 U. S., at 193.

See also United States v. Swift & Co., 318 U. S. 442, 444.

The result is not changed by the circumstance that we have jurisdiction over this appeal as to the other paragraphs of the indictment. United States v. Borden, supra, involved an indictment comparable to the present one for the purposes of jurisdiction under the Criminal Appeals Act. In Borden, the District Court had held all four counts of the indictment invalid as a matter of construction of the Sherman Act, but had also held the third count defective as a matter of pleading. The Court accepted jurisdiction on direct appeal as to the first, second, and fourth counts of the indictment, but it dismissed the appeal as to the third count for want of jurisdiction. "The Government's appeal does not open the whole case." 308 U. S. 188, 193.

It is hardly necessary to add that our ruling as to the Court's lack of jurisdiction now to review this aspect of the case implies no opinion whatsoever as to the correctness either of the District Court's appraisal of this paragraph of the indictment as a matter of pleading or of the court's view of the preclusive effect of § 207 (b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

*753 II.

The second numbered paragraph of the indictment alleged that the defendants conspired to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate Negro citizens of the United States in the free exercise and enjoyment of:

"The right to the equal utilization, without discrimination upon the basis of race, of public facilities in the vicinity of Athens, Georgia, owned, operated or managed by or on behalf of the State of Georgia or any subdivision thereof."

Correctly characterizing this paragraph as embracing rights protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the District Court held as a matter of statutory construction that 18 U. S. C. § 241 does not encompass any Fourteenth Amendment rights, and further held as a matter of constitutional law that "any broader construction of § 241 . . . would render it void for indefiniteness." 246 F. Supp., at 486. In so holding, the District Court was in error, as our opinion in United States v. Price, post, p. 787, decided today, makes abundantly clear.

To be sure, Price involves rights under the Due Process Clause, whereas the present case involves rights under the Equal Protection Clause. But no possible reason suggests itself for concluding that § 241—if it protects Fourteenth Amendment rights—protects rights secured by the one Clause but not those secured by the other. We have made clear in Price that when § 241 speaks of "any right or privilege secured . . . by the Constitution or laws of the United States," it means precisely that.

Moreover, inclusion of Fourteenth Amendment rights within the compass of 18 U. S. C. § 241 does not render the statute unconstitutionally vague. Since the gravamen of the offense is conspiracy, the requirement that the offender must act with a specific intent to interfere *754 with the federal rights in question is satisfied. Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91; United States v. Williams, 341 U. S. 70, 93-95 (dissenting opinion). And the rights under the Equal Protection Clause described by this paragraph of the indictment have been so firmly and precisely established by a consistent line of decisions in this Court,^[6] that the lack of specification of these rights in the language of § 241 itself can raise no serious constitutional question on the ground of vagueness or indefiniteness.

Unlike the indictment in Price, however, the indictment in the present case names no person alleged to have acted in any way under the color of state law. The argument is therefore made that, since there exist no Equal Protection Clause rights against wholly private action, the judgment of the District Court on this branch of the case must be affirmed. On its face, the argument is unexceptionable. The Equal Protection Clause speaks to the State or to those acting under the color of its authority.^[7]

In this connection, we emphasize that § 241 by its clear language incorporates no more than the Equal Protection Clause itself; the statute does not purport to give substantive, as opposed to remedial, implementation to *755 any rights secured by that Clause.^[8] Since we therefore deal here only with the bare terms of the Equal Protection Clause itself, nothing said in this opinion goes to the question of what kinds of other and broader legislation Congress might constitutionally enact under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to implement that Clause or any other provision of the Amendment.^[9]

It is a commonplace that rights under the Equal Protection Clause itself arise only where there has been involvement of the State or of one acting under the color of its authority. The Equal Protection Clause "does not . . . add any thing to the rights which one citizen has under the Constitution against another." United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 554-555. As MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS more recently put it, "The Fourteenth Amendment protects the individual against state action, not against wrongs done by individuals." United States v. Williams, 341 U. S. 70, 92 (dissenting opinion). This has been the view of the Court from the beginning. United States v. Cruikshank, supra; United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3; Hodges v. United States, 203 U. S. 1; United States v. Powell, 212 U. S. 564. It remains the Court's view today. See, e. g., Evans v. Newton, 382 U. S. 296; United States v. Price, post, p. 787.

This is not to say, however, that the involvement of the State need be either exclusive or direct. In a variety of situations the Court has found state action of a nature sufficient to create rights under the Equal Protection Clause even though the participation of the State was peripheral, or its action was only one of several co-operative *756 forces leading to the constitutional violation. See, e. g., Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1; Pennsylvania v. Board of Trusts, 353 U. S. 230; Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U. S. 715; Peterson v. City of Greenville, 373 U. S. 244; Lombard v. Louisiana, 373 U. S. 267; Griffin v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 130; Robinson v. Florida, 378 U. S. 153; Evans v. Newton, supra.

This case, however, requires no determination of the threshold level that state action must attain in order to create rights under the Equal Protection Clause. This is so because, contrary to the argument of the litigants, the indictment in fact contains an express allegation of state involvement sufficient at least to require the denial of a motion to dismiss. One of the means of accomplishing the object of the conspiracy, according to the indictment, was "By causing the arrest of Negroes by means of false reports that such Negroes had committed criminal acts."^[10] In Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, three members of the Court expressed the view that a private businessman's invocation of state police and judicial action to carry out his own policy of racial discrimination was sufficient to create Equal Protection Clause rights in those against whom the racial discrimination was directed.^[11] Three other members of the Court strongly disagreed with that view,^[12] and three expressed no opinion on the question. The allegation of the extent of official involvement in the present case is not clear. It may charge no more than co-operative private and state action similar to that involved in Bell, but it may go considerably further. For example, the allegation is broad enough to cover a charge of active connivance by agents of the State in the making of the "false reports," or other conduct amounting *757 to official discrimination clearly sufficient to constitute denial of rights protected by the Equal Protection Clause. Although it is possible that a bill of particulars, or the proof if the case goes to trial, would disclose no co-operative action of that kind by officials of the State, the allegation is enough to prevent dismissal of this branch of the indictment.

III.

The fourth numbered paragraph of the indictment alleged that the defendants conspired to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate Negro citizens of the United States in the free exercise and enjoyment of:

"The right to travel freely to and from the State of Georgia and to use highway facilities and other instrumentalities of interstate commerce within the State of Georgia."^[13]

The District Court was in error in dismissing the indictment as to this paragraph. The constitutional right to travel from one State to another, and necessarily to use the highways and other instrumentalities of interstate commerce in doing so, occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized. In Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, invalidating *758 a Nevada tax on every person leaving the State by common carrier, the Court took as its guide the statement of Chief Justice Taney in the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492:

"For all the great purposes for which the Federal government was formed, we are one people, with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States; and, as members of the same community, must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own States."

See 6 Wall., at 48-49.

Although the Articles of Confederation provided that "the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State,"^[14] that right finds no explicit mention in the Constitution. The reason, it has been suggested, is that a right so elementary was conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created.^[15] In any event, freedom to travel throughout the United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the Constitution. See Williams v. Fears, 179 U. S. 270, 274; Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, 97; Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, 177 (concurring opinion), 181 (concurring opinion); New York v. O'Neill, 359 U. S. 1, 6-8; 12-16 (dissenting opinion).

In Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, invalidating a California law which impeded the free interstate passage of the indigent, the Court based its reaffirmation of the federal right of interstate travel upon the Commerce Clause. This ground of decision was consistent with precedents firmly establishing that the federal commerce *759 power surely encompasses the movement in interstate commerce of persons as well as commodities. Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196, 203; Covington & Cincinnati Bridge Co. v. Kentucky, 154 U. S. 204, 218-219; Hoke v. United States, 227 U. S. 308, 320; United States v. Hill, 248 U. S. 420, 423. It is also well settled in our decisions that the federal commerce power authorizes Congress to legislate for the protection of individuals from violations of civil rights that impinge on their free movement in interstate commerce. Mitchell v. United States, 313 U. S. 80; Henderson v. United States, 339 U. S. 816; Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U. S. 454; Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294.

Although there have been recurring differences in emphasis within the Court as to the source of the constitutional right of interstate travel, there is no need here to canvass those differences further.^[16] All have agreed that the right exists. Its explicit recognition as one of the federal rights protected by what is now 18 U. S. C. § 241 goes back at least as far as 1904. United States v. Moore, 129 F. 630, 633. We reaffirm it now.^[17]

*760 This does not mean, of course, that every criminal conspiracy affecting an individual's right of free interstate passage is within the sanction of 18 U. S. C. § 241. A specific intent to interfere with the federal right must be proved, and at a trial the defendants are entitled to a jury instruction phrased in those terms. Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91, 106-107. Thus, for example, a conspiracy to rob an interstate traveler would not, of itself, violate § 241. But if the predominant purpose of the conspiracy is to impede or prevent the exercise of the right of interstate travel, or to oppress a person because of his exercise of that right, then, whether or not motivated by racial discrimination, the conspiracy becomes a proper object of the federal law under which the indictment in this case was brought. Accordingly, it was error to grant the motion to dismiss on this branch of the indictment.

For these reasons, the judgment of the District Court is reversed and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

*761 MR. JUSTICE CLARK, with whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE FORTAS join, concurring.

I join the opinion of the Court in this case but believe it worthwhile to comment on its Part II in which the Court discusses that portion of the indictment charging the appellees with conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate Negro citizens of the United States in the free exercise and enjoyment of:

"The right to the equal utilization, without discrimination upon the basis of race, of public facilities in the vicinity of Athens, Georgia, owned, operated or managed by or on behalf of the State of Georgia or any subdivision thereof."

The appellees contend that the indictment is invalid since 18 U. S. C. § 241, under which it was returned, protects only against interference with the exercise of the right to equal utilization of state facilities, which is not a right "secured" by the Fourteenth Amendment in the absence of state action. With respect to this contention the Court upholds the indictment on the ground that it alleges the conspiracy was accomplished, in part, "[b]y causing the arrest of Negroes by means of false reports that such Negroes had committed criminal acts." The Court reasons that this allegation of the indictment might well cover active connivance by agents of the State in the making of these false reports or in carrying on other conduct amounting to official discrimination. By so construing the indictment, it finds the language sufficient to cover a denial of rights protected by the Equal Protection Clause. The Court thus removes from the case any necessity for a "determination of the threshold level that state action must attain in order to create rights under the Equal Protection Clause." A study of the language in the indictment clearly shows *762 that the Court's construction is not a capricious one, and I therefore agree with that construction, as well as the conclusion that follows.

The Court carves out of its opinion the question of the power of Congress, under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, to enact legislation implementing the Equal Protection Clause or any other provision of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court's interpretation of the indictment clearly avoids the question whether Congress, by appropriate legislation, has the power to punish private conspiracies that interfere with Fourteenth Amendment rights, such as the right to utilize, public facilities. My Brother BRENNAN, however, says that the Court's disposition constitutes an acceptance of appellees' aforesaid contention as to § 241. Some of his language further suggests that the Court indicates sub silentio that Congress does not have the power to outlaw such conspiracies. Although the Court specifically rejects any such connotation, ante, p. 755, it is, I believe, both appropriate and necessary under the circumstances here to say that there now can be no doubt that the specific language of § 5 empowers the Congress to enact laws punishing all conspiracies—with or without state action—that interfere with Fourteenth Amendment rights.

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

I join Parts I and II^[1] of the Court's opinion, but I cannot subscribe to Part III in its full sweep. To the extent that it is there held that 18 U. S. C. § 241 (1964 ed.) reaches conspiracies, embracing only the action of *763 private persons, to obstruct or otherwise interfere with the right of citizens freely to engage in interstate travel, I am constrained to dissent. On the other hand, I agree that § 241 does embrace state interference with such interstate travel, and I therefore consider that this aspect of the indictment is sustainable on the reasoning of Part II of the Court's opinion.

This right to travel must be found in the Constitution itself. This is so because § 241 covers only conspiracies to interfere with any citizen in the "free exercise or enjoyment" of a right or privilege "secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States," and no "right to travel" can be found in § 241 or in any other law of the United States. My disagreement with this phase of the Court's opinion lies in this: While past cases do indeed establish that there is a constitutional "right to travel" between States free from unreasonable governmental interference, today's decision is the first to hold that such movement is also protected against private interference, and, depending on the constitutional source of the right, I think it either unwise or impermissible so to read the Constitution.

Preliminary, nothing in the Constitution expressly secures the right to travel. In contrast the Articles of Confederation provided in Art. IV:

"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States . . . shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively . . . ."

*764 This right to "free ingress and regress" was eliminated from the draft of the Constitution without discussion even though the main objective of the Convention was to create a stronger union. It has been assumed that the clause was dropped because it was so obviously an essential part of our federal structure that it was necessarily subsumed under more general clauses of the Constitution. See United States v. Wheeler, 254 U. S. 281, 294. I propose to examine the several asserted constitutional bases for the right to travel, and the scope of its protection in relation to each source.

I.

Because of the close proximity of the right of ingress and regress to the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Articles of Confederation it has long been declared that the right is a privilege and immunity of national citizenship under the Constitution. In the influential opinion of Mr. Justice Washington on circuit, Corfield v. Coryell, 4 Wash. C. C. 371 (1825), the court addressed itself to the question—"what are the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states?" Id., at 380. Corfield was concerned with a New Jersey statute restricting to state citizens the right to rake for oysters, a statute which the court upheld. In analyzing the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution, Art. IV, § 2, the court stated that it confined "these expressions to those privileges and immunities which are, in their nature, fundamental," and listed among them "The right of a citizen of one state to pass through, or to reside in any other state, for purposes of trade, agriculture, professional pursuits, or otherwise . . . ." Id., at 380-381.

The dictum in Corfield was given general approval in the first opinion of this Court to deal directly with the right of free movement, Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, *765 which struck down a Nevada statute taxing persons leaving the State. It is first noteworthy that in his concurring opinion Mr. Justice Clifford asserted that he would hold the statute void exclusively on commerce grounds for he was clear "that the State legislature cannot impose any such burden upon commerce among the several States." 6 Wall., at 49. The majority opinion of Mr. Justice Miller, however, eschewed reliance on the Commerce Clause and the Import-Export Clause and looked rather to the nature of the federal union:

"The people of these United States constitute one nation. . . . This government has necessarily a capital established by law . . . . That government has a right to call to this point any or all of its citizens to aid in its service . . . . The government, also, has its offices of secondary importance in all other parts of the country. On the sea-coasts and on the rivers it has its ports of entry. In the interior it has its land offices, its revenue offices, and its sub-treasuries. In all these it demands the services of its citizens, and is entitled to bring them to those points from all quarters of the nation, and no power can exist in a State to obstruct this right that would not enable it to defeat the purposes for which the government was established." 6 Wall., at 43-44.

Accompanying this need of the Federal Government, the Court found a correlative right of the citizen to move unimpeded throughout the land:

"He has the right to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have upon that government, or to transact any business he may have with it. To seek its protection, to share its offices, to engage in administering its functions. He has a right to free access to its sea-ports, through which all the operations of foreign trade and commerce are *766 conducted, to the sub-treasuries, the land offices, the revenue offices, and the courts of justice in the several States, and this right is in its nature independent of the will of any State over whose soil he must pass in the exercise of it." 6 Wall., at 44.

The focus of that opinion, very clearly, was thus on impediments by the States on free movement by citizens. This is emphasized subsequently when Mr. Justice Miller asserts that this approach is "neither novel nor unsupported by authority," because it is, fundamentally, a question of the exercise of a State's taxing power to obstruct the functions of the Federal Government: "[T]he right of the States in this mode to impede or embarrass the constitutional operations of that government, or the rights which its citizens hold under it, has been uniformly denied." 6 Wall., at 44-45.

Later cases, alluding to privileges and immunities, have in dicta included the right to free movement. See Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 180; Williams v. Fears, 179 U. S. 270, 274; Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78.

Although the right to travel thus has respectable precedent to support its status as a privilege and immunity of national citizenship, it is important to note that those cases all dealt with the right of travel simply as affected by oppressive state action. Only one prior case in this Court, United States v. Wheeler, 254 U. S. 281, was argued precisely in terms of a right to free movement as against interference by private individuals. There the Government alleged a conspiracy under the predecessor of § 241 against the perpetrators of the notorious Bisbee Deportations.^[2] The case was argued straightforwardly in terms of whether the right to free ingress and *767 egress, admitted by both parties to be a right of national citizenship, was constitutionally guaranteed against private conspiracies. The Brief for the Defendants in Error, whose counsel was Charles Evans Hughes, later Chief Justice of the United States, gives as one of its main points: "So far as there is a right pertaining to Federal citizenship to have free ingress or egress with respect to the several States, the right is essentially one of protection against the action of the States themselves and of those acting under their authority." Brief, at p. i. The Court, with one dissent, accepted this interpretation of the right of unrestricted interstate movement, observing that Crandall v. Nevada, supra, was inapplicable because, inter alia, it dealt with state action. 254 U. S., at 299. More recent cases discussing or applying the right to interstate travel have always been in the context of oppressive state action. See, e. g., Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, and other cases discussed, infra.^[3]

It is accordingly apparent that the right to unimpeded interstate travel, regarded as a privilege and immunity of national citizenship, was historically seen as a method of breaking down state provincialism, and facilitating the creation of a true federal union. In the one case in which a private conspiracy to obstruct such movement was heretofore presented to this Court, the predecessor of the very statute we apply today was held not to encompass such a right.

II.

A second possible constitutional basis for the right to move among the States without interference is the Commerce Clause. When Mr. Justice Washington articulated *768 the right in Corfield, it was in the context of a state statute impeding economic activity by outsiders, and he cast his statement in economic terms. 4 Wash. C. C., at 380-381. The two concurring Justices in Crandall v. Nevada, supra, rested solely on the commerce argument, indicating again the close connection between freedom of commerce and travel as principles of our federal union. In Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, the Court held squarely that the right to unimpeded movement of persons is guaranteed against oppressive state legislation by the Commerce Clause, and declared unconstitutional a California statute restricting the entry of indigents into that State.

Application of the Commerce Clause to this area has the advantage of supplying a longer tradition of case law and more refined principles of adjudication. States do have rights of taxation and quarantine, see Edwards v. California, 314 U. S., at 184 (concurring opinion), which must be weighed against the general right of free movement, and Commerce Clause adjudication has traditionally been the means of reconciling these interests. Yet this approach to the right to travel, like that found in the privileges and immunities cases, is concerned with the interrelation of state and federal power, not—with an exception to be dealt with in a moment—with private interference.

The case of In re Debs, 158 U. S. 564, may be thought to raise some doubts as to this proposition. There the United States sought to enjoin Debs and members of his union from continuing to obstruct—by means of a strike—interstate commerce and the passage of the mails. The Court held that Congress and the Executive could certainly act to keep the channels of interstate commerce open, and that a court of equity had no less power to enjoin what amounted to a public nuisance. It might *769 be argued that to the extent Debs permits the Federal Government to obtain an injunction against the private conspiracy alleged in the present indictment,^[4] the criminal statute should be applicable as well on the ground that the governmental interest in both cases is the same, namely to vindicate the underlying policy of the Commerce Clause. However, § 241 is not directed toward the vindication of governmental interests; it requires a private right under federal law. No such right can be found in Debs, which stands simply for the proposition that the Commerce Clause gives the Federal Government standing to sue on a basis similar to that of private individuals under nuisance law. The substantive rights of private persons to enjoin such impediments, of course, devolve from state not federal law; any seemingly inconsistent discussion in Debs would appear substantially vitiated by Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64.

I cannot find in any of this past case law any solid support for a conclusion that the Commerce Clause embraces a right to be free from private interference. And the Court's opinion here makes no such suggestion.

III.

One other possible source for the right to travel should be mentioned. Professor Chafee, in his thoughtful study, "Freedom of Movement,"^[5] finds both the privileges and immunities approach and the Commerce Clause approach unsatisfactory. After a thorough review of the history *770 and cases dealing with the question he concludes that this "valuable human right," id., at 209, is best seen in due process terms:

"Already in several decisions the Court has used the Due Process Clause to safeguard the right of the members of any race to reside where they please inside a st