163 U.S. 537 (1896)
One-Sentence Summary: An infamous case in the United States Supreme Court’s history in which a Louisiana statute, which required the separation of the races in railroad coach accommodations, was held to be a proper exercise of state authority under the Fourteenth Amendment as long as the facilities provided for African Americans were equal to those provided for whites.
Summary: An 1896 Supreme Court opinion in which the Court for the first time gave approval to state imposed racial distinctions as consistent with the purposes and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court described the aims and purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment in the same manner as had the earlier cases:
… its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro; to give definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from those of citizens of the states.
But these defined aims and purposes were now considered consistent with the imposition of legal distinctions based upon race. The Court said:
The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.
Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.
And reasonableness of the regulation was found in established social usage, custom and tradition:
So far, then, as a conflict with the 14th Amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order.
The Court held that as long as the racially segregated facilities were equal, the Louisiana statute did not run afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment. This gave rise to the “separate but equal” doctrine which was later declared unconstitutional by the Court in its landmark 1954 opinion of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Justice Harlan’s Dissent: In his dissent, Justice Harlan recognized and set down for history the purpose of segregation and the implications of the separate but equal doctrine and evidenced prophetic insight concerning the inevitable consequences of the Court’s approval of racial segregation. He said: “The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodations for whites and blacks to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches.”
He realized, moreover, that the approved regulations supported the inferior caste thesis of Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, supposedly eradicated by the Civil War Amendments: “But it seems that we have yet, in some of the states, a dominant race, a superior class of citizens, which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, on the basis of race.” And: “We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other people. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law.”
While the majority opinion sought to rationalize its holding on the basis of the state’s judgment that separation of races was conducive to public peace and order, Justice Harlan knew all too well that the seeds for continuing racial animosities had been planted. He said:
The sure guaranty of peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of equality before the law of all citizens of the United States without regard to race. State enactments, regulating the enjoyment of civil rights, upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned.
“Our Constitution”, said Justice Harlan, “is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”