Plessy vs. Ferguson is a legal decision made by the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of ‘separate but equal’ laws popular in the post-Civil War South. In June 1892 Homer Plessy, a man with one-eighth African blood, was arrested for violating Louisiana’s ‘equal but separate’ clause when he sat in a railway car designated for white passengers. Louisiana district court judge, Justice John Howard Ferguson, upheld the arrest, claiming a state had the legal power to regulate railroads operating within its borders.