Source: http://www.joeldufresnecase.com/us-supreme-court-decisions/plessy-v-ferguson-1
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 17:00:50+00:00

Document:
Upon the other hand, where a statute of Louisiana required those engaged in the transportation of passengers among the States to give to all persons traveling within that State, upon vessels employed in that business, equal rights and privileges in all parts of the vessel, without distinction on account of race or color, and subjected to an action for damages the owner of such a vessel, who excluded colored passengers on account of their color from the cabin set aside by him for the use of whites, it was held to be, so far as it applied to interstate commerce, unconstitutional and void. Hall v. De Cuir. The court in this case, however, expressly disclaimed that it had anything whatever to do with the statute as a regulation of internal commerce, or affecting anything else than commerce among the States.
A like course of reasoning applies to the case under consideration, since the Supreme Court of Louisiana in the case of the State ex rel. Abbott v. Hicks, Judge, et al., 44 La.Ann. 770, held that the statute in question did not apply to interstate passengers, but was confined in its application to passengers traveling exclusively within the borders of the State. The case was decided largely upon the authority of Railway Co. v. State, 66 Mississippi 662, and affirmed by this court in. In the present case, no question of interference with interstate commerce can possibly arise, since the East Louisiana Railway appears to have been purely a local line, with both its termini within the State of Louisiana. Similar statutes for the separation of the to races upon public conveyances were held to be constitutional in West Chester &c. Railroad v. Miles, 55 Penn.St. 209; Day v. Owen, 5 Michigan 520; Chicago &c. Railway v. Williams, 5 Illinois 185; Chesapeake &c. Railroad v. Wells, 85 Tennessee 613; Memphis &c. Railroad v. Benson, 85 Tennessee 627; The Sue, 22 Fed.Rep. 83; Logwood v. Memphis &c. Railroad, 23 Fed.Rep. 318; McGuinn v. Forbes, 37 Fed.Rep. 639; People v. King, 18 N.E.Rep. 245; Houck v. South Pac. Railway, 38 Fed.Rep. 226; Heard v. Georgia Railroad Co., 3 Int.Com.Com'n 111; S.C., 1 Ibid. 428.
of the street is as good as the other, or that a house or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion for the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. Thus, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, it was held by this court that a municipal ordinance of the city of San Francisco to regulate the carrying on of public laundries within the limits of the municipality violated the provisions of the Constitution of the United States if it conferred upon the municipal authorities arbitrary power, at their own will and without regard to discretion, in the legal sense of the term, to give or withhold consent as to persons or places without regard to the competency of the persons applying or the propriety of the places selected for the carrying on of the business. It was held to be a covert attempt on the part of the municipality to make an arbitrary and unjust discrimination against the Chinese race. While this was the case of a municipal ordinance, a like principle has been held to apply to acts of a state legislature passed in the exercise of the police power. Railroad Company v. Husen,; Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Kentucky, and cases cited ; Duggett v. Hudson, 43 Ohio St. 548; Capen v. Foster, 12 Pick. 48; State ex rel. Wood v. Baker, 38 Wisconsin 71; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 66; Hulseman v. Rems,41 Penn. St. 396; Orman v. Riley, 1 California 48.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.