Plessy v. Ferguson and Racial Segregation

The United States Supreme Court, in 1896, issued a judicial opinion in which it held that discrimination based on a racial classification did not violate either the Thirteenth or the Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.  The instant case arose out of a law enacted by Louisianas legislature in 1890.  This law, in effect,  provided for the creation and the maintenance of separate railroad cars for people of the white race and people of the black or colored race in addition, and central to the reasoning of the majority opinion, the law further provided that although these cars would be separate they would also be equal.  The law further stipulated that violations of this law could result in the imposition of fines and imprisonment.  Significantly, Because the railroad travel in question occurred within Louisiana, the statute was not open to challenge as a burden on interstate commerce. HYPERLINK httpwww.questia.comPM.qstaod5010808093(Pollak, 2005, p. 31).

Appellant, Plessy, purchased a ticket for the white railroad car and he was of mixed blood.  He was arrested and he initiated this suit alleging that the Louisiana statute was unconstitutional because it violated the 13th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution.   The Louisiana courts found no such violation and Plessey appealed to the United States Supreme Court.  By a 7-1 decision, though there was a blistering dissent by Justice Harlan, the decisions of the Louisiana courts were affirmed and the Louisiana statute was held to be constitutional.

The core question presented was whether the Louisiana statute violated Plessys constitutional rights pursuant to the 13th and 14th Amendments.  Plessy argued, with respect to the 13th amendment that the Louisiana statute functioned to preserve the vestiges of slavery in the form of state-sanctioned racial classifications that were akin to a form of involuntary servitude.  The main thrust was that the law compelled blacks to accept separate railroad cars in a manner that was involuntary and that being discriminated against in this way was a form of servitude.  The Supreme Court, however, siding with the state of Louisianas line of reasoning, dismissed this constitutional challenge rather quickly and without much discussion.  Specifically, Justice Brown argued that That it does not conflict with theThirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, n.p.).  The Supreme Court, in effect, interpreted the 13th Amendment very narrowly and conceived as it as prohibiting ownership of people rather than restrictions or burdens imposed through discriminatory practices.  The 14th Amendment arguments were of more interest to the Supreme Court.  The legal standards stated were that the States are forbidden from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, n.p.).  It was particularly with reference to the equal protection of the laws portion of the constitution that the judges rested their decision on in the final analysis.

Specifically, the majority reasoned that state laws providing for separate accommodations based on racial classifications withstood constitutional scrutiny so long as these separate accommodations or facilities were equal in nature and quality.  Noting that the Louisiana statute in question explicitly mandated that the separate carriages be equal the majority found no violation of the 14th Amendment.  Discrimination could therefore be predicated in racial classifications in a private discrimination context so long as some abstract notion of equality was provided for.  This gave rise, much to the countrys subsequent embarrassment, the Separate but Equal Doctrine and persisted until this legal precedent was finally rejected in 1954.

The effects of the decision were evident both in terms of constitutional interpretation and in terms of the continued constitutional sanctioning of private discrimination by the Supreme Court.  Justice Harlan, for instance, wrote a scathing dissent in which he argued that the constitution should be color-blind and that this decision was deeply offensive to the sprit and the language of the constitution and its amendments.  One modern legal scholar has characterized this enunciation of the Separate but Equal Doctrine as the segregated train cars at issue in Plessy implicated the capacity of blacks to participate as full citizens in civil life, whereas the majority saw such segregation only as a regulation of social relations sanctioned by long usage and custom  HYPERLINK httpwww.questia.comPM.qstaod5020203900(Lopez, 2007, p. 989).  The better view seems to the modern one in which equal protection of the laws refers to the laws rather than to what the law purports to regulate.  A constitution premised on equality must be interpreted to uphold that principle lest it fall into disrepute.  Separate can never truly be equal.  The Plessy reasoning was simply too attenuated, it effectively eliminated equal protection guarantees for decades, and it seems a testament to lingering racial hostilities following the American Civil war rather than a deeply considered analysis of the constitution and its underlying reason for existing in the first place.

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