In Plessy v. Ferguson the Court infamously ruled it was within constitutional boundaries for the state of Louisiana to enforce racial segregation in public facilities. In a 7-1 ruling (one of the nine Justices didn't consider the case due to the unexpected death of one of his daughters), the Court established that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to enforce racial equality, not to eliminate the distinction based on color. Under that reasoning, the Court ruled segregation could not be considered unconstitutional. The decision was the birth of the "separate but equal" doctrine that African Americans lived under for decades until it was later overturned with the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.