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Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan
U.S. Circuit Court for the District of California (1879) | 12 F. Cas. 252; 5 Sawy. 552; 25 Int. Rev. Rec. 312; 20 Alb. Law J. 250; 13 West. Jur. 409; 1879 U.S. App. LEXIS 1629
TL;DR: A federal court struck down a San Francisco ordinance requiring all male prisoners to have their hair cut short, finding it was facially neutral but intended to discriminate against Chinese men, for whom queues were culturally and religiously significant, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause.
Legal Significance: This case is a landmark early application of the Equal Protection Clause, establishing that a facially neutral law can be unconstitutional if its purpose and effect are to discriminate against a specific racial or ethnic group.