A dispute over monopoly and how to dispose of offal became central to the ability of the federal government to protect the rights of freedpeople because it resurrected in the courts the old dispute in Congress over the intention of the amendment. Did the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee only an equality of rights, which the states could curb and curtail as long they did so equally and reasonably? Or did it guarantee certain absolute rights that the federal government, the states, or other citizens could not abridge?
