# How can anyone appeal a Supreme Court decision? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 20, 2017, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883 "2017-04-20T23:06:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/41 "2017-04-27T21:55:22Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Nitpick: the _Plessy_ opinion merely held that segregation in public railcars was permissible. It had no direct impact on segregation in public education. However, SCOTUS later extended its Plessy _reasoning_ in [Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumming_v._Richmond_County_Board_of_Education) and [Lum v. Rice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lum_v._Rice). Segregated school systems considerably predated _Plessy_. > > Saying _Brown_ overturned _Plessy_ is common shorthand - even among attorneys. And Burger did of course reference _Plessy_ in his opinion in _Brown I_. However, as AK84 notes, the Brown I holding was very narrow. _Plessy_ established that some forms of segregation were permissible, and _Brown_ established that one form - of a different type to the one at issue in _Plessy_ - was not. > > _Plessy_ was never **expressly** reversed; right now, there is no SCOTUS decision which says railroads can’t segregate their passengers. Lawyers may bemoan this fact but most people don’t go to court just for the fun of it. If the court has already advised the public on what result it will give, people don’t bother going through the formality of taking the issue to court. That’s what the Plessy decision did in 1896; it advised the public that the courts would uphold racial segregation. It did so in broad enough terms that nobody felt the need to challenge it on specific issues. It was clear that a decision that said segregation was okay on trains was also going to cover segregation on buses and streetcars and in other areas. Nobody felt the need to spend thousands of dollars on an unnecessary lawsuit. So precedents do affect other issues because they tell people what kind of cases cannot be won and aren’t worth starting. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/42 "2017-04-27T22:41:40Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > True. > > But going out on a limb, I’d hazard the opinion that the intervening years have given rise to cases that cast Plessy’s continuing viability in doubt. 😃 And (thankfully) I would agree with you. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Lawyers may bemoan this fact but most people don’t go to court just for the fun of it. If the court has already advised the public on what result it will give, people don’t bother going through the formality of taking the issue to court. > > That’s what the Plessy decision did in 1896; it advised the public that the courts would uphold racial segregation. It did so in broad enough terms that nobody felt the need to challenge it on specific issues. It was clear that a decision that said segregation was okay on trains was also going to cover segregation on buses and streetcars and in other areas. Nobody felt the need to spend thousands of dollars on an unnecessary lawsuit. > > So precedents do affect other issues because they tell people what kind of cases cannot be won and aren’t worth starting. As I already explained, people _did_ spend thousands of dollars on “unnecessary lawsuits” about whether _Plessy_’s holding applied to public education. There were an untold number of cases that I didn’t mention about whether it applied to other public accommodations like hotels, restaurants, and so forth. Courts may announce a broad rule that clearly applies beyond the scope of the case that is before them. For example, the Obergefell Court held that “The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.” Judge Roy Moore is now in trouble again because he directed Alabama officials to act as though Obergefell did not effectively strike down Alabama’s marriage law. But usually, courts rule narrowly. The Plessy Court did. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/43 "2017-04-27T23:31:57Z")
> [@joema](#): > > The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed (or overruled) itself a number of times, but it’s very uncommon for this to happen quickly, say within three years. So while technically there is no appeal from a U.S Supreme Court decision, if the Court accepts a nearly identical case from the same ultimate plaintiffs within a short period and decides differently, that may functionally be an appeal. Quick reversals are rare. > > [List of overruled United States Supreme Court decisions - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_overruled_United_States_Supreme_Court_decisions) This concept is exactly what we’ve spent half a thread discussing. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/44 "2017-04-28T14:07:21Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Lawyers may bemoan this fact but most people don’t go to court just for the fun of it. If the court has already advised the public on what result it will give, people don’t bother going through the formality of taking the issue to court. > > That’s what the Plessy decision did in 1896; it advised the public that the courts would uphold racial segregation. It did so in broad enough terms that nobody felt the need to challenge it on specific issues. It was clear that a decision that said segregation was okay on trains was also going to cover segregation on buses and streetcars and in other areas. Nobody felt the need to spend thousands of dollars on an unnecessary lawsuit. > > So precedents do affect other issues because they tell people what kind of cases cannot be won and aren’t worth starting. That is wrong. Firstly, in _Plessy_ itself, the main judgment gives examples of cases where discrimination, sometimes more egregious sometimes implied, not expressed, based on race was not permitted by the Courts, and they specifically distinguish the case to the facts at hand ie segregated railway cars. Secondly, cases on Civil Rights, racial discrimination continued to come before the Court in the years before _Brown_ and sometimes they were successful. Considering how limited _Plessy_ was, why did it become synonymous with a reading of racial discrimination is constitutional? Since the text says quite the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/45 "2017-04-28T14:09:46Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > True. > > But going out on a limb, I’d hazard the opinion that the intervening years have given rise to cases that cast Plessy’s continuing viability in doubt. 😃 (You would know this obviously). Most times precedents are not expressly overruled. But you start getting a line of authorities which seem to go in a different direction and after a while you might well question (or in _Plessy’s_ case; outright declare) whether its still good law. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/46 "2017-04-28T14:30:33Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Considering how limited _Plessy_ was, why did it become synonymous with a reading of racial discrimination is constitutional? Since the text says quite the opposite. Because it was the first case with nationwide impact that actually adopted such a holding, and because in most of the nation segregation was the default position _already_. It wasn’t as though a bunch of state and local governments went, “oh, goody, SCOTUS has given us permission!” when the opinion was released. They were already enthusiastically segregating public facilities (or turning a blind eye to private segregation). The [Civil Rights Cases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Cases) had already established that the federal government didn’t have the power to prevent such state and local action, and that was really the trigger. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/47 "2017-04-28T18:23:28Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > That is wrong. Firstly, in _Plessy_ itself, the main judgment gives examples of cases where discrimination, sometimes more egregious sometimes implied, not expressed, based on race was not permitted by the Courts, and they specifically distinguish the case to the facts at hand ie segregated railway cars. Secondly, cases on Civil Rights, racial discrimination continued to come before the Court in the years before _Brown_ and sometimes they were successful. > > Considering how limited _Plessy_ was, why did it become synonymous with a reading of racial discrimination is constitutional? Since the text says quite the opposite. You are not properly stating the relevant “holding” of _Plessy v. Ferguson_. The relevant holding was that state laws requiring/providing “separate but equal” facilities for blacks as for whites were valid state actions under the Fourteenth Amendment (presumably referencing for the most part the equal protection clause). It is this specific holding that _Brown v. Board of Education_ rejected. Now, as to how _Plessy_’s court got there, that’s a horse of a different color. After the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1668, the first case testing racially discriminatory state laws was _Strauder v. West Virginia_, 100 US 303 (1879). Notice this is 11 years (!) later. In that case, the Court rejected a West Virginia law excluding blacks from juries. In making that determination, the Court found that the 14th Amendment gave blacks the right to be exempt from legal discriminations “implying inferiority in civil society”. Note that the Court specifically stated that, had the black plaintiff in the case complained because there were no blacks ON the jury, that would not have been a violation. It was the categorical exclusion of blacks from juries that was unconstitutional. Three years later, the Court upheld statutes that punished people more severely for fornicating with members of another race. In _Pace v. Alabama_, 106 US 583 (1882), the Court upheld Alabama’s statute that imprisoned people who fornicated with someone of the different race (those who fornicated with someone of the same race were merely fined). The reasoning here was that the statute applied identically to blacks and to whites; both were punished equally severely. This case, btw, was the basis for finding anti-miscegenation statutes constitutional, even though that specific concept was not before the Court. The next year, the Court struck down attempts by Congress to legislate civil rights to blacks in the _Civil Rights Cases_, 109 US 3 (1883). The rationale here was that the statutes attempted to make illegal acts of private persons, and the Court noted that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the acts of private persons. Three years after that, in the aforementioned _Yick Wo v Hopkins_ case (118 US 356 (1886)), the Court struck down a San Francisco ordinance which precluded anyone from running a laundry in a wooden building without permission of the Board of Supervisors. Not shockingly, all applications to do so from Chinese persons were rejected, all applications from white persons were allowed. The enforcement was clearly discriminatory against the Chinese, and no valid reason could be offered. So it was unconstitutional. So at the time of _Plessy v. Ferguson_, the following appeared to be true: the 14th Amendment barred direct discrimination against blacks or Chinese, but did not bar laws as long as the law itself did not treat people of different race differently as to application. In _Plessy_, of course, train companies were required by Louisiana to have “equal but separate accommodations” for black and white passengers. The question before the court, then, was did this involve direct discrimination against blacks, or did it treat blacks and whites equally? Cue a pre-Civil War case from Massachusetts, _Roberts v. City of Boston_, 59 Mass. (5 Cush.) 198 (1850). In that case, the Massachusetts Supreme Court had held that a black student could be required to attend a school established for blacks, even though it was not the closest school to her, as long as it was in all other respects “equal”. This case, and its rationale, became the underpinnings for the entire “separate but equal” set of Jim Crow laws. So what did _Plessy_ really say? 1. States can require/provide separate but equal facilities as a reasonable use of their police power, without violating the Amendment as San Francisco and West Virginia had (separate but equal is not inherently discriminatory). 2. States can do this so long as the law is a reasonable exercise of that police power, deference being given to the legislature in deciding if the exercise is a good faith effort to promote public good, rather than an attempt to oppress a specific race. 3. The law in question was reasonable, because it did not itself mark the black race with a badge of inferiority. > [@Justice Brown](#): > > We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. … if the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinitives, a mutual appreciation of each other’s methods and a voluntary consent of individuals. Did _Brown I_ overrule _Plessy_? Not expressly, no. > [@Chief Justice Warren](#): > > Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system. [Footnote 10]" > > Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. [Footnote 11] Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected. Interestingly, the Court in _Brown_ did not even bother to apply the concept of “strict scrutiny” to the situation, despite that concept having already been established with regard to racial discrimination in the _Korematsu_ case. In summary: _Plessy_ stood for the proposition that “separate but equal” facilities were allowed under the 14th Amendment (segregation). _Brown_ expressly held that this was not true as regards to education. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/48 "2017-04-28T19:05:36Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The [Civil Rights Cases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Cases) had already established that the federal government didn’t have the power to prevent such state and local action, and that was really the trigger. That should have read “such private action.” ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883/49 "2017-05-02T19:34:02Z")
Next time you’re in Nawlins, go to the Cabildo, a Louisiana history museum. The original courtroom in which _Plessy_ was first argued is still there: [http://louisianastatemuseum.org/museums/the-cabildo/](http://louisianastatemuseum.org/museums/the-cabildo/) > [@UDS](#): > > It’s all down to nomenclature. In the US, at the federal level, the Supreme Court is, well, supreme, but it ain’t necesarily so elswhere, even in the US. In New York State, for example, you _start_ your proceedings in the Supreme Court of New York. If you don’t like the outcome, you head off to the Court of Appeals… Not quite. First you have to go through the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court: [Judiciary of New York - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_New_York#Appellate_Division_of_the_Supreme_Court) > [@joema](#): > > The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed (or overruled) itself a number of times, but it’s very uncommon for this to happen quickly, say within three years… An important self-reversal after just three years, almost to the day: [West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_State_Board_of_Education_v._Barnette) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-anyone-appeal-a-supreme-court-decision/784883.md?page=2)