Plessy v. Ferguson

Facts

Louisiana passed a law in 1890 that required railway companies carrying passengers in the State to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races. A railroad could comply with two or more coaches on each train, or with a partition inside a coach. Train officers had to assign each passenger to the coach for his own race. A passenger who insisted on entering a coach for the other race faced a fine of twenty-five dollars, or up to twenty days in the parish prison. The information charged that Plessy was a passenger travelling between two stations within Louisiana. His petition said he was seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African blood, and that the colored blood was not discernible in him. It also said he took a vacant seat in a coach for white passengers, and that the conductor ordered him to leave and take a seat in the coach for colored persons. When he refused, it said, he was forcibly ejected with the aid of a police officer and jailed in the parish jail to answer a charge of violating the act. The information against him did not state his race or color. The railroad appeared to be a purely local line, with both ends in Louisiana.

Issues

1. Does a Louisiana law requiring equal but separate railway accommodations for white and colored passengers travelling within the State conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment?
2. Does that law abridge the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprive him of property without due process of law, or deny him the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment?

Holding

Louisiana's requirement of equal but separate railway accommodations, as applied to travel within the State, did not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment, so far as it required the railway to provide separate accommodations and the conductor to assign passengers by race. The Court could not say the law was unreasonable, and it affirmed the judgment below. It left open whether the provision denying damages to a passenger was valid.