NAACP v. CLAIBORNE HARDWARE Co.

Legal Principle at Issue

Does the First Amendment protect a politically motivated, nonviolent boycott organized to protest racial discrimination, or can the boycott's organizers and participants be held liable for economic losses suffered by businesses targeted by the boycott?

Action

Reversed and remanded. Petitioning party received a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

In 1966, a boycott of white merchants in Claiborne County, Mississippi, was launched at a meeting of a local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attended by several hundred black persons. The purpose of the boycott was to secure compliance by both civic and business leaders with a lengthy list of demands for equality and racial justice. The boycott was largely supported by speeches encouraging nonparticipants to join the common cause and by nonviolent picketing, but some acts and threats of violence did occur. 

In 1969, respondent white merchants filed suit in Mississippi Chancery Court for injunctive relief and damages against petitioners: the NAACP, the Mississippi Action for Progress, and a number of individuals who had participated in the boycott, including Charles Evers, the field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi and a principal organizer of the boycott. Holding petitioners jointly and severally liable for all of respondents' lost earnings during a 7-year period from 1966 to the end of 1972 on three separate conspiracy theories, including the tort of malicious interference with respondents' businesses, the Mississippi Chancery Court imposed damages liability and issued a permanent injunction. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected two theories of liability, but upheld the imposition of liability on the basis of the common law tort theory. Based on evidence that fear of reprisals caused some black citizens to withhold their patronage from respondents' businesses, the state supreme court held that the entire boycott was unlawful, and affirmed petitioners' liability for all damages "resulting from the boycott" on the ground that petitioners had agreed to use force, violence, and "threats" to effectuate the boycott.