When the cases in 92 U.S. were decided the Court comprised the following nine members: United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214 (1876), was a voting rights case in which the Supreme Court narrowly construed the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that suffrage for citizens can not be restricted due to race, color, or the individual having previously been a slave.

[3] The immigration commissioner examined the passengers and, acting under a California statute, identified Chy Lung and the others as "lewd and debauched women".

The women obtained a writ of habeas corpus, which led to them being moved into the custody of the Sheriff of San Francisco, where they stayed awaiting deportation upon the return of Japan, which had already left for China.

Federal charges were brought against several white insurgents under the Enforcement Act of 1870, which prohibited two or more people from conspiring to deprive anyone of their constitutional rights.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Morrison Waite overturned the convictions of the defendants, holding that the plaintiffs had to rely on state courts for protection.

The decision left African Americans in the South at the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments dominated by white Democratic legislatures, and allowed groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to continue to use paramilitary force to suppress black voting.