Mock Trial Plessy v. Ferguson

 

A sign at the site of Plessy V. Ferguson, explaining the case.

Louisiana Didn’t Invent Separate Cars. The Courts Already Approved Them.

Louisiana did not invent the idea of separate railway cars.

Courts across the country have approved it for decades.

Homer Plessy

Homer Plessy is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Louisiana’s 1890 law requiring “equal but separate” railway accommodations for white and colored passengers. The State asks the Court to uphold it.

The case turns on two questions. Does the law violate the Thirteenth Amendment? Does it violate the Fourteenth?

Start with the Thirteenth. It ended slavery and involuntary servitude.

Riding in a separate but equal car holds no one in bondage. The amendment does not apply.

The Court has already shown how narrowly it reads these postwar amendments. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, it held that the Thirteenth Amendment merely abolishes slavery.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equality before the law. It does not demand that the races mix socially. Louisiana’s law treats both races the same: each must ride in the car assigned to it.

Then there is precedent.

In 1850, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts upheld separate schools for white and Black children in Roberts v. City of Boston. Massachusetts was hardly hostile territory for abolitionists.

Shaw’s reasoning was practical. Social prejudice, he wrote, is not created by law and probably cannot be changed by law.

Railroads have faced the same question. Pennsylvania’s courts upheld separate cars in West Chester and Philadelphia Railroad v. Miles. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state’s authority to require separate cars within its borders in Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railway v. Mississippi.

Louisiana’s own Supreme Court has sustained this very statute.

19th century Train Station

That is a long line of authority.

Lawmakers also had a reason. The State has always held the police power to protect public peace, comfort, and good order. Louisiana’s legislature concluded that separate accommodations would reduce friction between passengers. That is a policy judgment, and policy judgments belong to elected legislators, not judges.

Plessy’s lawyers say the law brands Black passengers as inferior. But the statute says nothing of the kind. It requires equal accommodations. If a particular railroad provides unequal cars, the remedy is a lawsuit over those cars. It is not the end of the law.

The question before the Court is not whether this law is perfect. It is who gets to decide.

Louisiana says the people do, through their legislature.