<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Overruled by </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> (de facto) Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), and subsequent rulings </Td> </Tr> <P> Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896 . It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality--a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". This legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era (1865--1877). The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1, with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the lone dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan . </P> <P> Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history . Despite its infamy, the decision itself has never been explicitly overruled . However, a series of subsequent decisions--beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954--have severely weakened it to the point that it is usually considered to have been de facto overruled . In Brown, the Supreme Court ruled that Plessy's "separate but equal" doctrine was unconstitutional in the context of schools and educational facilities . </P>

What was the court's decision in plessy v ferguson
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