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How did Homer Plessy’s lawyers argue that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth Amendment?

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Plessy v. Ferguson judgment — Plessy v. Ferguson *Plessy* v. *Ferguson* judgment, issued by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, advancing the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.

In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the legal counsel for Homer Plessy argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth Amendment because the law presupposed the inferiority of African Americans.12

By mandating racial segregation, the act was understood to impose a "badge of servitude" upon African Americans, which effectively relegated them to a status of inferiority that the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to abolish. While the Supreme Court's majority opinion rejected this argument—asserting that the law did not reestablish slavery or constitute a badge of servitude—this perspective was central to the dissenting opinion of Justice John Marshall Harlan, who maintained that such legislation was fundamentally repugnant to the personal freedom of citizens.12