Cite as: 506 U. S. 263 (1993)
Opinion of Souter, J.
VI
The only remaining question is whether respondents have demonstrated, and the District Court has found, a conspiracy
because, for example, protesters arrested for trespass were immediately replaced by others who prevented police from barring integration of the lunch counter, leading to mass arrests. This is so because the protesters would not have deprived the owner of the segregated lunch counter of any independently protected constitutional right. See Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 618-622 (1984) (no associational right on the part of individual members to exclude women from the Jaycees); Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 258-261 (1964) (Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination in places of public accommodation does not work a deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law, nor a taking of property without just compensation).
The Court correctly describes the holding of Heart of Atlanta, but then ignores the import of that holding in reaching its conclusion. It argues that government action that "would have been the equivalent of what those conducting the sit-ins did," i. e., government action preventing restaurant owners from discriminating in provision of service against blacks, would have violated the Constitution by "physically occupy[ing the restaurant owners'] property without due process and without just compensation." See ante, at 282, n. 14. Whether the "property" to which the Court refers is the lunch counter itself, or the restaurant owners' "right to exclude blacks from their establishments" on the basis of race, ibid., assuming that could even be described as one of that bundle of rights that made up such a restaurant owner's property (a dubious proposition, see, e. g., Lane v. Cotton, 12 Mod. 472, 484 (K. B. 1701) (common-law duty of innkeepers to serve potential patrons equally, without regard to personal preference, so long as they can be accommodated)), the Court does not explain how, if such government action would violate the Constitution, Title II of the Civil Rights Act could provide "legal warrant for the physical occupation," ante, at 282, n. 14, without similarly offending the Takings and Due Process Clauses.
There is, additionally, an independent reason apart from the absence of any constitutional right on the restaurant owner's part, that a sit-in demonstration would not be actionable under my construction of the prevention clause. Although the question was left open in the sit-in cases decided by this Court in 1963 and 1964, see Paulsen, The Sit-In Cases of 1964: "But Answer Came There None," 1964 S. Ct. Rev. 137 (1964), and was then largely mooted by the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
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