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How did the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson interpret 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 majority opinion for Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Associate Justice Henry Billings Brown argued that state-mandated racial segregation did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.12

The Court reasoned that such laws did not reestablish slavery nor did they constitute a "badge" of slavery or servitude. In reaching this conclusion, the majority relied on the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), asserting that racial discrimination in public accommodations did not impose a badge of servitude but rather addressed matters that, at most, fell under the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. By narrowly interpreting the amendment, the Court effectively sanctioned the "separate but equal" doctrine, maintaining that segregation did not inherently designate African Americans as slaves or legally inferior.21