But something happened in 1886, even though nobody to this day knows exactly what or why.
That year Sanderson decided to again sue a government agency that was trying to regulate his railroad's activity. This time he went after Santa Clara County, California. His claim, in part, was that because a railroad was a "person" under the constitution, local governments couldn't "discriminate" against it by having different laws and taxes in different places. In 1885, the case came before the Supreme Court.
In arguments before the court in January, 1885, Sanderson asserted that "corporate persons" should be treated the same as "natural (or human) persons."
He said, "I believe that the clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment] in relation to equal protection means the same thing as the plain and simple yet sublime words found in our Declaration of Independence, "all men are created equal.' Not equal in physical or mental power, not equal in fortune or social position, but equal before the law."
Sanderson's fellow lawyer for the railroads, George F. Edmunds, added his opinion that the Fourteenth Amendment leveled the field between artificial persons (corporations) and natural persons (humans) by a "broad and catholic provision for universal security, resting upon citizenship as it regarded political rights, and resting upon humanity as it regarded private rights."
But that wasn't actually what the case was about - that was just a minor point.
The railroad was being sued by the county for back taxes. The railroad claimed six different defenses. The specifics are not important, because the central concern is whether the court ruled on the Fourteenth Amendment issue. As will be shown below, the Supreme Court's decision clearly says it did not. But to put the railroad's complaint in perspective, consider this:
On property with a $30 million mortgage, the railroad was refusing to pay taxes of about $30,000. (That's like having a $10,000 car and refusing to pay a $10 tax on it "- and taking the case to the Supreme Court.)
One of the railroad's defenses was that when the state assessed the value of the railroad's property, it accidentally included the value of the fences along the right-of-way. The county, not the state, should have assessed the fences. So the railroad withheld all its taxes.
Yes, this is an exceedingly picayune distinction. All the tax was still due to Santa Clara County; the railroad didn't dispute that. But they said the wrong assessor assessed the fences - a tiny fraction of the whole amount - so they refused to pay any of the tax, and they fought it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And as it happens, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed:
"-the entire assessment is a nullity, upon the ground that the state board of equalization included "- property [the fences] which it was without jurisdiction to assess for taxation"-
The Court rejected the county's appeal, and that was the end of it. Except for one thing.
One of the railroad's six defenses involved the Fourteenth Amendment. As it happens, since the case was decided based on the fence issue, the railroad didn't need those extra defenses, and none of them was ever decided by the court. But one of them - related to the Fourteenth Amendment - still crept into the written record, even though the Court specifically did not rule on it.
Here's how the matter unfolded. First the railroad's defense.
The treatment that the railroad claimed was unfair
