[1] The case was a landmark interpretation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution,[2][3] and contains a classic legal statement of the right to travel which continues to undergird American jurisprudence.

[4][5] On June 26, 1917, Local 800 of the Industrial Workers of the World (or IWW, a labor union), struck the Phelps Dodge Corporation and other mining companies in the town of Bisbee, Arizona.

[6][7][8][9] On July 11, Douglas and other Phelps Dodge corporate executives met with Cochise County Sheriff Harry C. Wheeler to conspire to seize, by force of arms, all the striking workers, forcibly transport (deport) them several hundred miles away from Bisbee, and abandon them in another desert town without food, clothing or funds.

To this end, Sheriff Wheeler recruited and deputized 2,200 men from Bisbee and the nearby town of Douglas to act as a posse.

Phelps Dodge officials also met with executives of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, who agreed to provide rail transportation for any deportees.

Phelps Dodge and the other employers provided Sheriff Wheeler with a list of all the men on strike, as well as suspected IWW sympathizers.

At 11:00 a.m., 23 cattle cars belonging to the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad arrived in Bisbee, and the remaining 1,286 arrestees were forced at gunpoint to board the train.

They were unloaded in the Tres Hermanas mountain range in Luna County, New Mexico without money or transportation at 3:00 a.m. on July 13 and told not to return to Bisbee or they would suffer physical harm.

[6][7][8][9] The Luna County sheriff and New Mexico Governor Washington E. Lindsey contacted President Woodrow Wilson for assistance.

The deportees were housed in tents meant for Mexican refugees who had fled across the border to escape the Army's Pancho Villa Expedition.

[6][7][8][9] In its final report, issued on November 6, 1917, the commission declared the deportations "wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal.

"[10] On May 15, 1918, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered the arrest of 21 mining company executives and several Bisbee and Cochise County elected leaders and law enforcement officers.

W. C. Herron, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and brother-in-law of former President William Howard Taft, argued the case for the United States.

[1] Chief Justice Edward Douglass White wrote the opinion for the 8–1 majority, in which the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

White opened the majority's decision by reviewing at length the four indictments and briefly describing the ruling of the federal district court.

In the space of less than one sentence, White came to the landmark[2][3] conclusion that only the states had enforcement authority over the "privileges and immunities" mentioned in Article IV.

"[The] Constitution plainly intended to preserve and enforce the limitation..." White reasoned, and thus "the continued possession by the States of the reserved power to deal with free residence, ingress and egress, cannot be denied.

Just a year after Aptheker, the Supreme Court fashioned the rational relationship test for constitutionality in Zemel v. Rusk,[38] as a way of reconciling the rights of the individual with the interests of the state.

For example, the Supreme Court overturned state prohibitions on welfare payments to individuals who had not resided within the jurisdiction for at least one year as an impermissible burden on the right to travel.