Morgan v. Virginia

Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946), is a major United States Supreme Court case. The case was argued by William H. Hastie, the 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 and later became a Supreme Court justice.^[1]

The action resulted in a landmark ruling in 1946, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–1 that Virginia's state law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was illegal.^[2][3] 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 Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.^[4]

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

In 1960, in Boynton v. Virginia, the Supreme Court extended the Morgan ruling to bus terminals used in interstate bus service. African Americans continued to be ejected or arrested when they tried to integrate such facilities, as Southern states refused to obey Morgan v. Virginia.^[5]

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