Irene Morgan - Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case

Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case

Irene Morgan appealed her case on the conviction for violating the segregation laws. After exhausting appeals in state courts, she and her lawyers appealed her conviction on constitutional grounds all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1946, the justices agreed to hear the case.

Her case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946), was argued by William H. Hastie, former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and later a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Thurgood Marshall was co-counsel. The action resulted in a landmark ruling in 1946, which struck down state laws requiring segregation in situations involving interstate transportation. Hastie and Marshall used an innovative strategy to brief and argue the case. Instead of relying upon the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, they argued successfully that segregation on interstate travel violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"If something happens to you which is wrong, the best thing to do is have it corrected in the best way you can," said Morgan. "The best thing for me to do was to go to the Supreme Court."

In 1960, in Boynton v. Virginia, the Supreme Court further extended the Morgan ruling to bus terminals used in interstate bus service. Nonetheless, many African Americans were ejected or arrested when they tried to integrate such facilities as Southern states refused to obey Morgan v. Virginia.