[2] Its holding, along with those of its companion cases of Virginia v. Rives (1880) and Ex parte Virginia (1880) established the proposition that it is a denial to criminal defendants of the equal protection of the law for a state to exclude persons from service on a grand or petit jury on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

These holdings do not guarantee criminal defendants that the grand or petit juries involved in their case will be composed either in full or in part of members of a non-white defendant's race (as was sought in the Rives case), but held instead that equal protection demands only that potential jurors could not be excluded from jury service on account of their race.

Additionally, the Supreme Court did not exercise its power of judicial review to strike down West Virginia's juror qualifications statute as unconstitutional, as Strauder and his attorneys did not seek such a remedy.

Instead, Strauder desired his case be removed to federal court, where he expected he could receive a venire that included freedmen.

In Strauder and the companion cases, the Supreme Court also issued a narrow interpretation of the removal provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Upon his return to Wheeling, Strauder appeared before the circuit court for Ohio County, West Virginia and received a preliminary examination before Judge Thayer Melvin.

Strauder demurred the indictment as defective, arguing the facts alleged did not rise to murder in the first degree, and that the panel from which the grand jury was selected excluded non-whites; the court overruled the arguments.

Strauder then pleaded not guilty by reason of temporary insanity and asked the court for a continuance to the October term, which was granted.

At the arraignment, Strauder and his counsel moved to quash the new indictment and to remove the case to federal court on grounds that West Virginia law precluded non-white citizens from grand and petit jury service.

During the course of the first trial, an act regarding trial procedure had passed as part of the 1873 reconstruction of the West Virginia courts in consequence of the new state constitution; the act of March 12, 1873 provided "[a]ll white male persons, who are twenty-one years of age and not over sixty, and who are citizens of this State, shall be liable to serve as jurors, except as herein provided."

Strauder's case was then sent back to the Circuit Court of Ohio County for resentencing, but held over until the April 1878 term.

The two dissenting justices, Field and Clifford, explained their position in the case of Ex Parte Virginia, decided the same day.

[3] In the latter case, Field wrote, with Clifford joining, "The equality of the protection secured extends only to civil rights, as distinguished from those which are political or arise from the form of the government and its mode of administration.

On Monday, September 6, 1880, the sheriff of Ohio County was served with a writ of habeas corpus to produce Strauder before the U.S. district court the next day and to show cause why he was being held.

Over the next two days, before Judge John Jay Jackson Jr., arguments were heard over why the writ should be quashed, the state seeking to maintain its custody of Strauder.

On Thursday, September 9, the court denied the state's motion to quash the writ, ordered custody of Strauder be transferred to the U.S.

[5] Because it was not raised in the context of Strauder, the Court also did not consider in its analysis whether state actions that have a disparate impact upon African-Americans would violate the Equal Protection Clause; that question was not considered until almost a century later in Washington v. Davis, which reaffirmed that Strauder "established that the exclusion of [African-Americans] from grand and petit juries in criminal proceedings violated the Equal Protection Clause, but the fact that a particular jury or a series of juries does not statistically reflect the racial composition of the community does not, in itself, make out an invidious discrimination forbidden by the Clause."