Plessy v. Ferguson
The decision allowed Jim Crow segregation to continue until later civil rights decisions rejected its logic.
Did legally mandated racial segregation violate the Equal Protection Clause?
Plessy v. Ferguson arose from a challenge to Louisiana’s Separate Car Act, which required separate railway cars by race. Homer Plessy, who was of mixed race, deliberately violated the law to test whether state-mandated segregation violated the Constitution.
The Supreme Court upheld segregation under the doctrine later summarized as “separate but equal.” The majority treated segregation as a permissible state police-power regulation and rejected the argument that separation itself imposed a badge of inferiority under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Plessy gave constitutional cover to Jim Crow segregation for more than half a century. Brown v. Board of Education rejected that logic in public education in 1954, and later civil-rights law dismantled much of the legal structure Plessy had protected.
Facts
Louisiana required separate railway cars by race.
Ruling
The Court upheld segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.
Why It Matters
The decision allowed Jim Crow segregation to continue until later civil rights decisions rejected its logic.
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