In: Economics
What were the Civil Rights Cases? How did the Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson affect the Fourteenth Amendment?
Human Rights Lawsuits, Five U.S. court cases On 15 October 1883, the Supreme Court consolidated (because of their similarity) a single ruling in which the court declared the 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional and thus spurred Jim Crow laws which codified the previously private, informal, and local practice of racial segregation in the United States. The historic ruling in an 8–1 decision struck down the crucial clause of the Civil Rights Act banning racial discrimination of public places (such as hotels, restaurants, theaters, and railroads), which would later be deemed "public accommodation."
The five consolidated cases were United States v. Stanley, United States v. Ryan, United States v. Nichols, United States v. Singleton, and Robinson and wife v. Memphis & Charleston R.R. Co.
In the Reconstruction era, Congress sought to protect African Americans through a number of civil rights and compliance laws and two more U.S. amendments. Constitution. Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment defined a U.S. citizen as any person born in the country, or alien, and naturalized. It also prevented states from denying any person the due legal process or equal protection of the laws, or from abridging the rights and immunities attached to citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment stated that it was unfair to refuse the right to vote regardless of race.
Plessy v. Ferguson, case in which the U.S. On 18 May 1896, by a vote of seven to one (one court did not participate), the Supreme Court adopted the contentious "separate but equal" theory for determining the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major investigation into the interpretation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), which forbids States from denying any individual within their jurisdictions "equal protection of the laws"
While the majority opinion did not include the term "separate but equal," it did grant constitutional recognition to legislation aimed at enforcing racial segregation by separate and ostensibly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites. It served as a legal precedent until the Supreme Court reversed it in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education