The Living Constitution

THE SUPREME COURT AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

1896

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court rules that "separate but equal" facilities for different races are acceptable.

On June 7, 1892, Herman Plessy, a Louisiana man of "one-eighth African blood," bought a first-class ticket for travel between New Orleans and Covington on the East Louisiana Railway. When Plessy boarded the train, the conductor ordered him to move from a whites-only coach to the coach reserved for nonwhites. Plessy refused, and was promptly removed from the train and imprisoned.

Plessy appealed his case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Louisiana statute requiring separate carriages for whites and nonwhites violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws." In a 7–1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Plessy, establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine by declaring that segregated public accommodations were constitutional so long as the facilities provided for each race were equal.

The Court argued that the only inequality found in the Louisiana law was an imagined social inequality, not a concrete political or civic inequality. Justice Brown, writing for the majority, explained: "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." In any case, the justice continued, legislation is powerless to affect social inequalities. "If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals. … If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane."

The "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy remained a guiding judicial principle until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954.