The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) limited the “privileges and immunities” of U.S. citizenship guaranteed by the newly enacted Fourteenth Amendment. At a time when many rights were given and regulated by states rather than the federal government, the Court’s decision applied the Amendment only to those rights explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.

In 1869, the Louisiana state legislature granted a monopoly of the New Orleans slaughtering business to a single corporation. Local butchers operating separate slaughtering businesses sued Louisiana under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges and Immunities Clause. The butchers argued that the state unconstitutionally deprived them of the "privilege" of operating slaughterhouse companies and prevented them from earning a living. The Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the Privileges and Immunities Clause was not violated by the monopoly. The clause only affected the rights of U.S. citizenship, not state citizenship. By designating the rights of state citizens as beyond federal protection, this decision opened the door for Jim Crow laws in the post-Reconstruction South.