The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 that Virginia's segregation law on interstate buses was unconstitutional, striking down similar statutes nationwide.
On June 3, 1946, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 328 U.S. 373. In a 7-1 ruling, the Court held that Virginia's law mandating racial segregation on interstate buses placed an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce, a power reserved exclusively to the federal government under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Justice Stanley Reed authored the majority opinion, reasoning that requiring passengers to change seating arrangements as they crossed state lines created an undue patchwork of conflicting regulations that interfered with the free flow of interstate travel. Only Justice Harold Burton dissented. The ruling effectively invalidated segregation statutes governing interstate bus and rail travel not just in Virginia, but in other states with similar laws.
The case was argued before the Court by NAACP attorneys including Thurgood Marshall and Spottswood W. Robinson III, marking an important early victory in the broader NAACP legal strategy that would later culminate in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Though the ruling did not end segregation in intrastate travel or in bus terminal facilities, it was a landmark step that emboldened civil rights activists. It directly inspired the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, an early interracial "freedom ride" testing compliance with the ruling in the Upper South. Decades later, historians would recognize Morgan's case as a crucial legal precursor to Rosa Parks' 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and the broader civil rights movement's challenges to transportation segregation.