http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1895/ U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, presented by The Oyez Project (www.oyez.org) en-us <p>Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its trains an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?</p><p>No, the state law is within constitutional boundaries. The majority, in an opinion authored by Justice Henry Billings Brown, upheld state-imposed racial segregation. The justices based their decision on the separate-but-equal doctrine, that separate facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal. (The phrase, "separate but equal" was not part of the opinion.) Justice Brown conceded that the 14th amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the law. But Brown noted that "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 unsatisfactory to either." In short, segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination.</p> http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1895/1895_210/ <p>Does penalty of imprisonment at hard labor and deportation without a jury trial constitute a violation of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments?</p><p>Yes; consequently, the imprisonment provisions of the Act are void. Congress may deport without a jury trial, but imprisonment at hard labor is an infamous offense calling for judicial trial to establish the guilt of the accused. "It is not consistent with our theory of government that the legislature should, after having defined an offense as an infamous crime, find the fact of guilt and adjudge the punishment by one of its own agents."</p> http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1895/1895_204/