Segregated facilities for blacks and whites are constitutional under the doctrine of separate but equal. As long as the separate facilities are equal in quality, then such separation is not unconstitutional. (De facto overruled by Brown v. Board of Education (1954)) Decided May 18, 1896 (argued April 13, 1896). Opinion of the Court: Henry Billings Brown → go there Dissenting: Harlan. Overruled by (de facto) Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and subsequent rulings{{sfnp|Schauer|1997 → go there Applied: the Thirteenth Amendment → go there Applied: the Fourteenth Amendment → go there Topic: Discrimination based on race and ethnicity. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many "Jim Crow laws" re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Wiki link