Established the 'separate but equal' doctrine that legally sanctioned racial segregation in the United States for nearly six decades.
Key Facts
- Decision Date
- May 1896
- Court Vote
- 7–1 against Plessy
- Lone Dissenter
- Justice John Marshall Harlan
- Key Doctrine
- Separate but equal
- Amendment Disputed
- Fourteenth Amendment
- De Facto Overruled By
- Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, deliberately boarded a whites-only railroad car in New Orleans to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890. His subsequent arrest and conviction prompted a legal challenge that argued the Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. After the Louisiana courts upheld the law, Plessy appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In May 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7–1 ruling against Plessy, holding that Louisiana's Separate Car Act did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority reasoned that legal equality did not require the elimination of racial distinctions, and gave broad deference to state police powers. Justice Harlan dissented, arguing the Constitution is color-blind and tolerates no racial classifications.
The ruling legitimized Jim Crow laws across the American South, entrenching state-sanctioned racial segregation in public life for decades. The 'separate but equal' doctrine remained controlling law until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 began dismantling it. Plessy is now widely regarded as one of the most condemned decisions in Supreme Court history, though it has never been formally overruled.