163 U.S. 537 (1896)
In 1890 the General Assembly of Louisiana passed Act No. 111.1 The statute required railway companies carrying passengers in the state to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.2 This could be accomplished by providing two or more passenger coaches for each train or by dividing the coaches with a partition.3 The act did not apply to street railroads.4
Train officers were required to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment for the race to which the passenger belonged.5 A passenger who insisted on entering the wrong coach faced a fine of twenty-five dollars or imprisonment up to twenty days.6 The same penalties applied to officers who made incorrect assignments.7 Nurses attending children of the other race were exempted.8
Homer Plessy, seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African with the mixture not discernible, boarded an East Louisiana Railway train traveling between two stations within Louisiana.9 He took a seat in the coach for white passengers.10 The conductor ordered him to move to the colored coach.11 Upon refusal, Plessy was ejected with police assistance and imprisoned in the parish jail.12
An information in the criminal District Court charged Plessy with violating the statute.13 Plessy petitioned for a writ of prohibition, claiming the statute violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.14 The East Louisiana Railway was a local line with termini within the state.15
Whether the Louisiana statute of 1890 requiring railway companies to provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored races violates the Thirteenth Amendment?16
The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime.17 A statute that implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races or reestablish a state of involuntary servitude.18
No. The statute requires railway companies to provide equal but separate accommodations, which is a legal distinction founded in color and does not impose involuntary servitude.19 In the established facts, the act of 1890 empowered officers to assign passengers to coaches based on race, with penalties for refusal, but this does not amount to bondage or ownership of persons as chattels.20 Plessy was assigned to a coach and ejected when he refused, but the law does not control labor or services for the benefit of another.21 The Supreme Court applied the rule from the Slaughter-House Cases that the amendment was intended to abolish slavery as previously known.22
The Louisiana statute does not violate the Thirteenth Amendment.23
Whether the Louisiana statute of 1890 requiring railway companies to provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored races violates the Fourteenth Amendment by abridging privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving persons of liberty without due process of law, or denying equal protection of the laws?24
The Fourteenth Amendment makes all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and prohibits states from abridging privileges or immunities, depriving of life, liberty or property without due process, or denying equal protection.25 The object of the amendment was to enforce absolute equality of the two races before the law, but it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color or to enforce social equality.26 Laws permitting separation in places where people are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race.27 They are within the competency of state legislatures in the exercise of their police power.28
No. The statute is a reasonable regulation within the police power of the state, as it provides equal accommodations and is based on established usages and customs.29 Applying to the facts, Homer Plessy, seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African, boarded the East Louisiana Railway, a local line within Louisiana, sat in the white coach, was ordered to move, refused, and was ejected and imprisoned.30 The Supreme Court of Louisiana had construed the statute to apply only to intrastate passengers.31 The law does not abridge privileges because the distinction is not founded on race implying inferiority but on reasonable separation.32
The court noted that the power to assign implies determining race, but the issue was the constitutionality of requiring separate accommodations.33 The underlying fallacy is assuming that separation stamps the colored race with inferiority, but it is not by reason of the act but because of the construction put upon it.34
The Louisiana statute does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.35
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Harlan dissented on the ground that the statute interferes with the personal liberty of citizens by regulating the use of a public highway solely upon the basis of race.36 He stated that the Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.37 In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.38
Harlan contended that the statute had its origin in the purpose to exclude colored people from coaches assigned to white persons.39 He maintained that if a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so, and no government proceeding alone on grounds of race can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each.40 Harlan viewed the decision as permitting state legislation to place a large body of American citizens in a condition of legal inferiority, inconsistent with the guarantee of a republican form of government.41
He warned that the judgment would prove pernicious, stimulating aggressions upon the rights of colored citizens and encouraging the belief that state enactments can defeat the purposes of the recent amendments.42