Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964), was a case in which the US Supreme Court held that due process prohibits retroactive application of any judicial construction of a criminal statute that is unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law that has been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.

On March 14, 1960, two African-American students from Allen University conducted a sit-in demonstration by sitting down at a booth at the lunch counter restaurant in an Eckerd's drugstore in Columbia, South Carolina.

The South Carolina Supreme Court, in upholding the convictions, had construed the statute as also covering the act of remaining on the premises of another after receiving notice to leave, a construction that had been adopted in another case in 1961.

The Court stated that a judicial construction that has the effect of broadening the activities that constitute a crime and is applied retroactively operates precisely like an ex post facto law.

The dissenting opinion by Justice Black argued that the conduct of remaining after being told to leave was understood to violate the South Carolina trespass statute, and Bell stated that the Fourteenth Amendment did not require an owner of a restaurant to serve customers.