1. By: Isabella Armstrong and Brianna Dinch
Plessy v. Ferguson
By: Isabella Armstrong and Brianna Dinch

2. Title and Constitutional Issue
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
163 U.S. 537
Violation of Equal protection clause of the 14th amendment
Separate but equal doctrine

3. Background
A Louisiana Law passed in 1890 “providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races” sparked the case, because It required that all passenger railways had to provide these separate cars, which should be equal in facilities.
Homer Adolph Plessy, who was of mixed race, wanted to test the law’s constitutionality, so on June 7, 1892, he bought a train ticket and took a seat in the whites-only car.
He refused to move from the seat when the conductor asked, and was later arrested and put in jail.

4. Parties Involved, When and Where
Homer Adolph Plessy: plaintiff
John H. Ferguson: judge
Verdict delivered on May 18, 1896
Supreme Court of the United States (Washington, D.C.)

5. Previous Court and History
Old Louisiana State Capitol
Separate Car Act- law passed in Louisiana in 1890 requiring separate railway cars for blacks and whites
Emancipation Proclamation- issued by President Lincoln freed slaves in the Confederacy in 1863
13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery
14th Amendment granted due process and equal protection under the law to African Americans
15th Amendment granted blacks the right to vote, including former slaves

6. History Continued
The Civil Rights Act of prohibited cases of racial discrimination and guaranteed equal access to public accommodations regardless of race or color
Social rights for people of color were still up for debate, but political rights were solid

7. Supreme Court Ruling/Reasoning
The Court denied that segregated railroad cars for blacks constituted unlawful discrimination
In declaring separate-but-equal facilities constitutional on intrastate railroads, the Court ruled that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), not “social rights” (sitting in the railroad car of your choice).

8. Our opinion on the Ruling
We do not agree with the ruling since they said that the 14th amendment only protected political rights, not social rights.
We believe the concept of “Separate but Equal” is unlawful and unnecessary. People of any race should be able to sit where they want.

9. Majority Opinion
Associate Justice Henry Billings Brown rejected Plessy’s arguments that the act violated the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted full and equal rights of citizenship to African Americans. The Separate Car Act did not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, according to Brown, because it did not establish slavery or constitute a “badge” of slavery or servitude. Brown argued, the 14th amendment was intended to secure only the legal equality of African Americans and whites, not their social equality.

10. Dissenting Opinion
In his lone dissenting opinion, Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan insisted that the court had ignored the obvious purpose of the Separate Car Act. The effect of the law, he argued, was to interfere with the personal liberty and freedom of movement of both African Americans and whites. Because it thus attempted to regulate the civil rights of citizens on the arbitrary basis of their race, the act was repugnant to the principle of legal equality underlying the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause.

11. Other Court Cases
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, that the majority of the Supreme Court would essentially concur with dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson.
The majority opinion in that case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” in public education, calling segregated schools “inherently unequal,” and declaring that the plaintiffs in the Brown case were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”