drilling industry. The defendants included D. J. McDuffy, Inc., the Industrial Foundation of the South, and all members of the Foundation. The complaint, based entirely on 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2), sought damages for the class and a permanent injunction enjoining defendants from continuing their allegedly unlawful practices. The district court denied class action status with respect to the damage claim, but certified the class with respect to the claim for injunctive relief.

In January 1978 the district court considered the defendants' motion for summary judgment. The district court gave plaintiffs the benefit of all assumptions and drew all inferences in favor of the plain

5. 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2) provides:

6.

(2) If two or more persons in any State or Territory conspire to deter, by force, intimidation, or threat, any party or witness in any court of the United States from attending such court, or from testifying to any matter pending therein, freely, fully, and truthfully, or to injure such party or witness in his person or property on account of his having so attended or testified, or to influence the verdict, presentment, or indictment of any grand or petit juror in any such court, or to injure such juror in his person or property on account of any verdict, presentment, or indictment lawfully assented to by him, or of his being or having been such juror; or if two or more persons conspire for the purpose of impeding, hindering, obstructing, or defeating, in any manner, the due course of justice in any State or Territory, with intent to deny to any citizen the equal protection of the laws, or to injure him or his property for lawfully enforcing, or attempting to enforce, the right of any person, or class of persons, to the equal protection of the laws;

As the district court noted, plaintiffs have not invoked admiralty jurisdiction, the antitrust laws, nor diversity jurisdiction. Kimble v. D. J. McDuffy, Inc., 445 F.Supp. 269, 272 n. 3 (E.D. La. 1978).

7. Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act provided: Sec. 2. That if two or more persons within any State or Territory of the United States shall conspiré together to overthrow, or to put down, or to destroy by force the government of the United States, or to levy war against the United States, or to oppose by force the authority of the government of the United States, or by force, intimidation, or threat to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property

tiffs. After thoroughly examining Section 1985(2), the district court concluded that the statute does not cover the actions that plaintiffs complained of, and held that the defendants were entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Kimble v. D. J. McDuffy, Inc., 445 F.Supp. 269 (E.D.La.1978). Plaintiff then instituted this appeal.

II. Statutory History

The starting point for delineating the coverage provided by section 1985(2) is the section's statutory roots. See Brawer v. Horowitz, 535 F.2d 830 (3d Cir. 1976). The parent of Section 1985 is Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act. Act of April 20, 1871, Ch. 22, § 2, 17 stat. 13. In 1874, pursuant to

of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, or by force, intimidation, or threat to prevent any person from accepting or holding any office or trust or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging the duties thereof, or by force, intimidation, or threat to induce any officer of the United States to leave any State, district, or place where his duties as such officer might lawfully be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or to injure his person while engaged in the lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duty, or by force, intimidation, or threat to deter any party or witness in any court of the United States from attending such court, or from testifying in any matter pending in such court fully, freely, and truthfully, or to injure any such party or witness in his person or property on account of his having so attended or testified, or by force, intimidation, or threat to influence the verdict, presentment, or indictment, of any juror or grand juror in any court of the United States, or to injure such juror in his person or property on account of any verdict, presentment, or indictment lawfully assented to by him, or an account of his being or having been such juror, or shall conspire together, or go in disguise upon the public highway or upon the premises of another for the purpose, either directly or indirectly, of depriving any person or any class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws, or for the purpose of preventing or hindering the constituted authorities of any State from giving or securing to all persons within such State the equal protection of the

Congressional authorization, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish supervised the revision and publication of all the statutes of the United States. During the course of that ⚫ revision, minor grammatical changes were made and Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act was reformulated into three subsections. Brawer 535 F.2d at 838, 839. The reformulated version of Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act made its way into the revised statutes as Section 1980. The current language of Section 1985, including Section 1985(2), is taken verbatim from Revised Statutes § 1980, Second.

Section 1985(2) was once part of a unitary statutory scheme designed to protect individuals from a wide range of conspiracies. Thus, in seeking to interpret the language of Section 1985(2), courts must be guided by prior interpretations of similar language found in Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, specifically those provisions that today constitute 1985(1) and (3).

III. The Section 1985(2) Cause of Action A. Analytical Framework

The issue before this Court is whether plaintiffs produced sufficient evidence to

laws, or shall conspire together for the purpose of in any manner, impeding, hindering, obstructing, or defeating the due course of justice in any State or Territory, with intent to deny to any citizen of the United States the due and equal protection of the laws, or to injure any person in his person or his property for lawfully enforcing the right of any person or class of persons to the equal protection of the laws, or by force, intimidation, or threat to prevent any citizen of the United States lawfully entitled to vote from giving his support or advocacy in a lawful manner towards or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector of President or Vice-President of the United States, or as a member of the Congress of the United States, or to injure any such citizen in his person or property on account of such support or advocacy each and every person so offending shall be deemed guilty of a high crime, and, upon conviction thereof in any district or circuit court of the United States or district or supreme court of any Territory of the United States having jurisdiction of similar offences, shall be punished by a fine not less than five hundred nor more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment, with or without hard labor, as the court may de

survive defendants' motion for summary judgment. A careful analysis of the various provisions of Section 1985(2) and an application of the facts to those provisions is required in order to resolve this question. In conducting this examination, we must approach the "perfidious syntax" of Section 1985(2) with some care. Brawer, 535 F.2d at 837. The statute contains several different provisions, no two of which are directed at the same type of conspiracy. As the district court noted, when one omits the clauses in Section 1985(2) that are applicable to juries and jurors (and inapplicable in the case at bar), subsection 2 contains four clauses that create four distinct causes of action:

A. If two or more persons conspire to deter, by force, intimidation, or threat, any party or witness in any court of the United States from attending such court, or from testifying to any matter pending therein

or

B. to injure such party or witness in his

person or property on account of his having so attended or testified, or termine, for a period of not less than six months nor more than six years, as the court may determine, or by both such fine and imprisonment as the court shall determine. And if any one or more persons engaged in any such conspiracy shall do, or cause to be done, any act in furtherance of the object of such conspiracy, whereby any person shall be injured in his person or property, or deprived of having and exercising any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States, the persons so injured or deprived of such rights and privileges may have and maintain an action for the recovery of damages occasioned by such injury or deprivation of rights and privileges against any one or more of the persons engaged in such conspiracy, such action to be prosecuted in the proper district or circuit court of the United States, with and subject to the same rights of appeal, review upon error, and other remedies provided in like cases in such courts under the provisions of the act of April ninth, eighteen hundred and sixty-six, entitled "An act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and to furnish the means of their vindication."

Those parts of Section 2 that today constitute Section 1985(2) are emphasized.

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C. if two or more persons conspire for the purpose of impeding, hindering, obstructing, or defeating, in any manner, the due course of justice in any State or Territory, with intent to deny to any citizen the equal protection of the laws, or

D. to injure him or his property for lawfully enforcing the right of any person, or class of persons, to the equal protection of the laws. 445 F.Supp. at 274. In determining whether plaintiffs' claim should have survived a motion for summary judgment, this Court must examine each of these four clauses individually.

Exactly what evidence is required to establish that defendants entered into a conspiracy with the intent of denying plaintiffs equal protection of the law is not readily apparent. The starting point for this inquiry must be the Supreme Court's interpretation of similar language from Section 1985(3) in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971). Although the Supreme Court in Griffin was focusing on the language of Section 1985(3), this Court has held that, in light of its statutory roots, clause C is to be interpreted in accordance with Griffin. Slavin v. Curry, 574 F.2d 1256, 1262, modified 583 F.2d 779 (5th Cir. 1978).

Griffin involved an assault on blacks traveling a Mississippi highway by white private citizens. The attack was racially motivated-defendants acted on the mistaken belief that the plaintiffs were civil rights workers. The issue in Griffin was

whether Section 1985(3) created a cause of action for damages against individuals acting in a purely private capacity.

The Court held that Section 1985(3) was designed to protect individuals from actions by private persons. The Court recognized, however, that Section 1985(3) was not "intended to apply to all tortious, conspiratorial interferences [by private parties] with the rights of others." Id. 403 U.S. at 101, 102, 91 S.Ct. at 1798. "The language requiring intent to deprive of equal protection, or equal privileges and immunities, means that there must be some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based, animus behind the conspiratorial actions." Id. at 102, 91 S.Ct. at 1798 (footnote omitted). Thus, since defendants in the case at bar are private parties, in determining whether plaintiffs have satisfied the requisites of

clause C this Court must determine whether

plaintiffs have established that defendants were motivated by the appropriate classbased, discriminatory animus.

We note from the start that not all classes of individuals fall within the protective cloak of clause C. See, e. g., McLellan v. Mississippi Power & Light Co., 545 F.2d 919 (5th Cir. 1977) (en banc) (persons who have voluntarily filed a bankruptcy petition are not a protected class); Bricker v. Crane, 468 F.2d 1228 (1st Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 410 U.S. 930, 93 S.Ct. 1368, 35 L.Ed.2d 592 (1973) (doctors who have testified against their brethren in malpractice cases are not a protected class). The class that plaintiffs allege is the target of defendants' conspiracy is one that includes workers employed in the oil exploration industry who have pursued some type of personal injury claim. While personal injury claimants are undoubtedly a class for some purposes, the question in the case at bar is whether Congress intended to proscribe a conspiracy to obstruct the due course of justice aimed at personal injury claimants. A careful review of Congressional intent and the subsequent jurisprudence establishes that Section 1985(2), clause C was not designed to protect this class of plaintiffs.

There are two distinct genres of classes protected by clause C. The first category is defined by some courts as one where the class is characterized by some inherited or immutable characteristic. Perhaps the bet

ter definition is that recently endorsed by

the Ninth Circuit in DeSantis v. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., Inc., 608 F.2d 327 (9th Cir. 1979). The Ninth Circuit held that in determining whether a group of individuals satisfies the class requirement of 1985(3), federal courts have remained faithful to the basis principle underlying the adoption of Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act: "The governmental determination that some groups require and warrant special federal assistance in protecting their civil rights." Id. at 333. Cf. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1963) (Although the civil rights statutes were enacted in response to post-war conditions in the South, they are cast in general language and provide for flexibility).

The Supreme Court focused on the most obvious of this type of protected class in Griffin, when the Court held that conspirators who acted with a racially discriminatory animus could be found to be in violation of Section 1985(3). Lower federal courts have extended this first category beyond race to encompass those who are victims of a conspiracy due to their sex, Life Insurance Company of North America v. Reichardt, 591 F.2d 499 (9th Cir. 1979); Curran v. Portland Superintending School Committee, 435 F.Supp. 1063 (D.Maine 1977); religion, Marlowe v. Fisher Body, 489 F.2d 1057 (6th Cir. 1973); or national origin, Id.1

Plaintiffs are unable to establish that Congress or the judiciary has displayed a special solicitude towards their class because of its need for assistance in enforcing its civil rights. While this Court recognizes that the protective scope of the Act is not static, a class composed of personal injury 9. That Congress intended to protect those discriminated against due to race is evidenced by the title of the Act itself: "An Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for Other Purposes." 17 Stat. 13 (1871).

claimants does not fall within this first category of classes protected by Section 1985(2), clause C.

There is a second category of classes enThis category includes individuals who are compassed by Sections 1985(2) and (3). victims of a conspiracy because of their political beliefs or associations.

That Congress intended to protect individuals who are conspired against because of their political beliefs or associations is beyond doubt. Although the Ku Klux Klan is today thought of as a racist organization, in 1871 it was primarily a political organization. The Republicans, who controlled the 42d Congress, found Klan violence especially troublesome because they were convinced that it was politically motivated. Comment, A Construction of Section 1985(c) in Light of Its Original Purpose, 46 Univ.Chi. L.Rev. 402, 408 (1979). The majority report of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Alleged Outrages in the Southern States reflected this concern: "[I]t is clearly established that the Ku

Klux Organization does exist, has a political purpose, is composed of members of the democratic or conservative party, [and] has sought to carry out its purpose by murders, whippings, intimidations, and violence." H.R.Rep.No. 1, 42d Cong. 1st Sess. XXXXXXI. The need to protect individuals being harassed because of their political associations rang throughout the Congressional debate. Senator George Edmunds of Vermont, who reported the bill out of committee, stated that:

We do not undertake in this bill to interfere with what might be called a private conspiracy growing out of a neighborhood feud of one man or set of men against another to prevent one getting an indictment in the State courts against men for burning down his barn; but, if in a case like this, it should appear that this con10. Classes that have been and will be recognized as warranting special assistance in protecting their civil rights are not limited to the "suspect groups" of the fourteenth amendment.

spiracy was formed against this man because he was a Democrat, if you please, or because he was a Catholic, or because he was a Methodist, or because he was a Vermonter, (which is a pretty painful instance that I have in mind in the State of Florida within a few days where a man lost his life for that reason,) then this section could reach it.

42d Cong., 1st Sess. 567 (1871), reprinted in A. Avins, The Reconstruction Amendments Debates 547 (1967) (emphasis added). Representative Ellis Roberts repeated this same concern when discussing, in the House, the need for legislation.

But one rule never fails: the victims whose property is destroyed, whose persons are mutilated, whose lives are sacrificed, are always Republicans. They may be black or white; they include those who wore the blue and those who wore the gray; new-comers and life-long residents, but only Republicans. Stain the door lintels with the mark of opposition to reconstruction and of hostility to the national Administration, and the destroying angel passes by. Omit that sign, and the torch may kindle the roof that covers women and children; the scourge may fall upon shoulders that stoop with weakness and with age; the bullet may pierce the breast without warning. Such uniformity of result can come only from design. Republicans only are beaten and mutilated and murdered, because the blows are aimed at Republicans only. Cong.Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 412-413 (1871) (emphasis added).

Federal courts have recognized that those who are discriminated against because of political views or associations fall with the protective scope of Section 1985(2) and (3). Courts have found a class-based animus sufficient to support causes of action where the conspiracy is directed toward supporters of a particular political candidate, Cameron

11. Because plaintiffs have not established a class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus, this Court need not determine the applicability of the Section 1985(3) requirement of independent illegality set forth in this Court's opinion in McLellan v. Mississippi Power & Light Co.,

v. Brock, 473 F.2d 608 (6th Cir. 1973) and Means v. Wilson, 522 F.2d 833 (8th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 958, 96 S.Ct. 1436, 47 L.Ed.2d 364 (1976); voters who were deceived about the actual effect of their vote, Smith v. Cherry, 489 F.2d 1098 (7th Cir. 1973), cert. denied 417 U.S. 910, 94 S.Ct. 2607, 41 L.Ed.2d 214 (1974); individuals critical of the President and his policies, Glasson v. City of Louisville, 518 F.2d 899. (6th Cir.), cert. denied 423 U.S. 930, 96 S.Ct. 280, 46 L.Ed.2d 258 (1975); members of a group advocating an unpopular position, Puentes v. Sullivan, 425 F.Supp. 249 (W.D. Tex.1977); laborers who are not members of a union, Scott v. Moore, 461 F.Supp. 224 (E.D.Tex.1978); members of the teaching profession who talk or associate with the CIA, Selzer v. Berkowitz, 459 F.Supp. 347 (E.D.N.Y.1978); and students who exercise their first amendment rights by joining certain organizations, Brown v. Villanova University, 378 F.Supp. 342 (E.D.Pa.1974).

Unfortunately for plaintiffs in the case at bar, this second category is of little assistance. Plaintiffs have provided no summary judgment evidence to establish that they are victims of a conspiracy because of their political views or associations. Rather,

even assuming a conspiracy exists, the record indicates that the conspiracy is directed at plaintiffs because they filed personal injury claims. This is simply not the type class that is protected by the statute.

In summary, plaintiffs have not established the class-based, discriminatory animus that is required for a cause of action under Section 1985(2), clause C. The district court's grant of summary judgment on this portion of subsection (2) is affirmed."

C. Clause D

[2] Clause D is aimed at conspiracies against individuals because the individuals lawfully enforce the right of any person or

545 F.2d 919, 925-7 (5th Cir. 1977) (en banc), to Section 1985(2), clause C; or the constitutionality of a statute that creates a federal cause of action against private parties for obstructing justice in a state or territory. 445 F.Supp. at 275, n. 5.