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Which Supreme Court justice wrote the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson?
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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.
The majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was written by Associate Justice Henry Billings Brown.12
In his opinion, Justice Brown argued that the Separate Car Act did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment because it did not reestablish slavery or impose a "badge" of servitude. Furthermore, he contended that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to secure only legal equality rather than social equality, and that racial segregation was a reasonable exercise of state police power to maintain public order.12