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Boynton v. Virginia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 12, 1960 Decided December 5, 1960
Full case name	Boynton v. Virginia
Citations	364 U.S. 454 (more)
Holding
Racial segregation in public transportation is illegal under the Interstate Commerce Act.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas · Tom C. Clark John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan, Jr. Charles E. Whittaker · Potter Stewart
Case opinions
Majority	Black, joined by Warren, Frankfurter, Douglas, Harlan, Brennan, Stewart
Dissent	Whittaker, joined by Clark
Laws applied
Interstate Commerce Act

Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960) was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The case overturned a judgment convicting an African American law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal which was "whites only." It held that racial segregation in public transportation was illegal because such segregation violated the Interstate Commerce Act, which broadly forbade discrimination in interstate passenger transportation. It moreover held that bus transportation was sufficiently related to interstate commerce to allow the United States Federal government to regulate it to forbid racial discrimination in the industry. The majority opinion was written by Justice Hugo Black.

The significance of Boynton was not so much in its holding — it managed to avoid deciding any Constitutional questions in its decision, and its expansive reading of Federal powers regarding interstate commerce was also well established by the time of the decision — but the outlawing of racial segregation in public transportation led to a movement called the Freedom Rides, in which African Americans and whites together rode various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, prompted Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to confront the Interstate Commerce Commission with its failure to enforce a bus desegregation ruling it had handed down in 1955, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, 64 MCC 769 (1955) as well as the companion train desegregation case, NAACP v. St. Louis-Santa Fe Railway Company, 297 ICC 335 (1955). By presenting the Commission with its own rulings in a May 29, 1961 petition, Kennedy was able to prompt it to do what it had promised in 1955, five before the Boynton ruling was handed down, and six years before the Freedom Riders set out to test Boynton across the Deep South. On September 22, 1961, the ICC issued regulations which implemented its 1955 Keys and NAACP rulings as well as the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton, and on November 1, those regulations went into effect, effectively ending Jim Crow in public transportation.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 364
• Freedom Rides
• Barnes, Catherine A. Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit, Columbia University Press, 1983.
• Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, Oxford University Press, 2006.

External links

• Works related to Boynton v. Virginia at Wikisource
• Full text of the decision courtesy of Findlaw.com

From Wikisource

Court Documents
Opinion of the Court
Dissenting Opinion Whittaker
Wikipedia article

For refusing to leave the section reserved for white people in a restaurant in a bus terminal, petitioner, a Negro interstate bus passenger, was convicted in Virginia courts of violating a state statute making it a misdemeanor for any person "without authority of law" to remain upon the premises of another after having been forbidden to do so. On appeal, he contended that his conviction violated the Interstate Commerce Act and the Equal Protection, Due Process and Commerce Clauses of the Federal Constitution; but his conviction was sustained by the State Supreme Court. On petition for certiorari to this Court, he raised only the constitutional questions. Held:

1. Notwithstanding the fact that the petition for certiorari presented only the constitutional questions, this Court will consider the statutory issue, which involves essentially the same problem - racial discrimination in interstate commerce. P. 457.

2. Under 216 (d) of the Interstate Commerce Act, which forbids any interstate common carrier by motor vehicle to subject any person to unjust discrimination, petitioner had a federal right to remain in the white portion of the restaurant, he was there "under authority of law," and it was error to affirm his conviction. Pp. 457-463.

(a) When a bus carrier has volunteered to make terminal and restaurant facilities and services available to its interstate passengers as a regular part of their transportation, and the terminal and restaurant have acquiesced and cooperated in this undertaking, the terminal and restaurant must perform these services without discriminations prohibited by the Act. Pp. 457-461.

(b) Although the courts below made no findings of fact, the evidence in this case shows such a situation here. Pp. 461-463.

Reversed.

Thurgood Marshall argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were Martin A. Martin, Clarence W. Newsome, Jack Greenberg, Louis H. Pollak and Constance Baker Motley. [364 U.S. 454, 455]

Walter E. Rogers, Special Assistant to the Attorney General of Virginia, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were A. S. Harrison, Jr., Attorney General of Virginia, and R. D. McIlwaine III, Assistant Attorney General.

Solicitor General Rankin, Assistant Attorney General Tyler, Philip Elman, Harold H. Greene and David Rubin filed a brief for the United States, as amicus curiae, urging reversal.