One Lie a Billion Repercussions
It was created to protect Blacks from state abuses against them. 600,000 Americans died in the civil war so that such a law could be passed. There of course were other reasons the war was fought, but for the protection of rights to Blacks it definitely had to be won by the North.
In 1886 the California Case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c was heard. The case was uncontroversial involving ownership of fences and the state charging taxes to the railroad. The Supreme court Justices ruled that the railroad did not have to pay the taxes.
Decisions by the Supreme Court are contained in what are known as United States Reports. Preceding every entry is a headnote, written by a court reporter, who's duty it is to record the court decision. In this case it was Bancroft Davis, a former president of Newburg and New York Railway.
In his headnote: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.
Author Jack Beatty wrote about the lingering questions as to how the reporter's note reflected a quotation that was absent from the opinion itself.
Why did the chief justice issue his dictum? Why did he leave it up to Davis to include it in the headnotes? After Waite told him that the Court 'avoided' the issue of corporate personhood, why did Davis include it? Why, indeed, did he begin his headnote with it? The opinion made plain that the Court did not decide the corporate personality issue and the subsidiary equal protection issue.
So from this suspicious headnote, who's body does not make that conclusion, corporations used it as precedent so they could become lawfully a person with all rights and privileges. The consequences of the situations we find ourselves today grew from this one lie 124 years ago.