Plessy v. Ferguson

Provision of the Constitution at Issue

14th Amendment

Holding

7-1 ruling for Ferguson

Statute or Government Action in Dispute

Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its trains an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Dissent

Justice Harlan dissented, "Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law."

Major Doctrines

Racial apartheid was read into the constitution using a provision meant to ensure equality for African Americans This case was the death nail in the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment

Reasoning

The majority ruled that the state law requiring separation of races is a valid exercise of a state's police powers The law mandating the separate but equal public accommodations satisfies the 14th Amendment equal protection guarantee Justice Brown concluded that separate but equal is a proper exercise of a state's police power and segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination. The majority rejects the argument that segregation stamps blacks with a badge of inferiority

Facts

This was an arranged suit. The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy--who was seven-eighths Caucasian--took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested, tried and convicted. He appealed to SCOTUS