Plessy V. Ferguson Supreme Court Case Study

The Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case (163 U.S. 537) began on April 13, 1896 and ended on May 18, 1896 when the court made their decision; this case is between Homer Adolph Plessy and John Ferguson. The main issue in this case was racial segregation; Plessy was told to sit in the section of the train that is meant for African Americans, but he refused. The question that is being asked is if “Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its trains [is] an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?” (Oyez). The amendments that are being violated are the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clause.

The case began because Plessy, who is seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African American, sat in a section of a Louisiana train that is designated for

Judge Ferguson defended the state law, arguing that it was a legal distinction occurring among different races. The judge also argued that under the “separate but equal” doctrine, it states that segregating people based on their race did not violate the 14th Amendment.

On May 18,1896, the Supreme Court decision was 7-1 for Ferguson. John M. Harlan was the only person who voted “yes”, while Melville W. Fuller, Stephen J. Field, Horace Gray, Henry B. Brown, George Shiras Jr., Edward D. White, and Rufus Peckham all voted “no”. The only person to have not decided or voted was David J. Brewer, and the majority opinion was written by Justice Henry Billings Brown. The majority opinion was that the state laws did not authorize or approve of racial segregation, while the dissenting opinion was that the state laws approved of racial