Plessy challenged his arrest, maintaining that the railroads use of racially segregated cars violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court disagreed with Plessy's assertion. The Court determined that racial segregation did not imply that Blacks were inferior. Furthermore, the Court found that the facilities provided to Blacks and whites were of equal quality. Because of this, the Court determined that separate but equal facilities did not violate the letter or the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision in Plessy helped legalize segregation in the United States. In fact, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Court repeatedly found that the facilities provided for whites and Blacks were equal. The decision in Plessy was the definitive law on segregation until Brown v. Board of Education. In Brown, the plaintiff alleged that being forced to attend a Black-only school was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the Supreme Court had consistently approved racially segregated facilities, the legal team in Brown provided substantial evidence, not only that the facilities provided to Blacks were inferior, but also that these inferior facilities had detrimental effects on Black students. The resulting decision, now referred to as Brown I, was that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal. Unfortunately, the decision in Brown I lost much of its bite the following year, when the Court, in a decision now referred to as Brown II, directed states...

The reality was that compliance with Brown took many years.
While actual compliance with Brown was not immediate, Brown was significant in that it marked the end of legal segregation. Although Brown was only aimed at overturning school segregation, Brown's effect was much broader. Having decided that school segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court could no longer rubber-stamp other segregationist laws. Brown was followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gave teeth to the decision and opened up the door to federal enforcement of state civil rights violations.

Looking at the history of race legislation in the United States, one sees a history of laws that restrict the rights of Blacks, legislation aimed at defeating discrimination, and then retaliatory laws. Currently, the United States is in a period of expanded rights for minorities. However, there have been several incidents of people using laws aimed at correcting the evils of slavery and racial discrimination to promote whites above minorities by claiming reverse discrimination. Even though there is more racial equality in the United States than there has been at any other time in its history, it would be naive to assume that racial equality will continue to grow without another wave of serious opposition.