So you're telling me your business benefits by discriminating. If you, God forbid, a black person sat down and here, all hell would break loose.

And this is my favorite quote ever from any civil rights decision.

It is of no consolation to an individual denied the equal protection of the laws that it was done in good faith.

Welcome to opening arguments.

This is Matt Cameron.

And with me is Janessa Seymour, voting rights and civil rights and all kinds of other account of attorney. Today on the schedule, we have under color of law, and I have to say this is about the least I know going into an episode. So I'm playing the Thomas role today. I'm going to learn some things about what it means to operate under color of law and why it matters. And of course, because it's Monday, we're talking about a classic Warren Court case.

The big one we're going to focus on today is Burden v. Wilmington Parking Authority.

And I've got to say the Wilmington Parking Authority is probably the least exciting defendant we're going to look at.

I know.

It sounds so impossibly boring. But I promise it's a very interesting and powerful

civil rights decision. Even though it involves a parking lot in Delaware. Okay. I know. I know.

I'm just going to hold the faith here. I will assume that that is true. You haven't let me down yet.

So I think

this is a pretty important subject. And for reasons we'll talk about at the end, you know, from what I know about, the concept of operating under color of law, it could really be a problem for the future of the Supreme Court over to water this down. Not that they would ever do such a thing to our civil rights. Yeah, I'm really interested to know more about the history of this and what the Warren

Court had to say and what we can learn about it today.

So any thoughts before we get going?

We will have to address the elephant in the room that I can't actually say the legal

concept we're talking about under color of law.

It's those AW words that really get me, man, especially when they're single syllable,

the law. I can totally say that word and you know what I meant. So I'm normally like,

this is a legal podcast. We talk about statutes and rules and regulations that I never have to say

the word law. Everybody better get on board. It's accent time anytime I have to. I'm going to have to say under color of law repeatedly today. That word really does bring out the New York. Yeah, I can really hear it. I know. I know. It's that. And the single syllable ones, like when I lived in the Midwest, I was ordering one time and I said, can I get some salt?

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