a legislature the
enactment of a law which it knew to be unconstitutional and if it were
well settled that a separate coach law was unconstitutional, as
applied to interstate commerce, the law applying on its face to _all_
passengers should be limited to such as the legislature were competent
to deal with. The Court of Appeals has found such to be the intention
of the General Assembly in this case, or at least, that if such were
not its intention, the law may be supported as applying alone to
domestic commerce. In thus holding the act to be severable it is
laying down a principle of construction from which there is no
appeal."

"While we do not deny the force of the railroad's argument in this
connection, we cannot say that the General Assembly would not have
enacted this law if it had supposed it applied only to domestic
commerce; and if it were in doubt on that point, we should
unhesitatingly defer to the opinion of the Court of Appeals, which
held that it would give it that construction if the case called for
it. In view of the language above quoted it would be unbecoming for us
to say that the Court of Appeals would not construe the law as
applicable to domestic commerce alone, and if it did, the case would
fall directly within the _Mississippi Case_.[43] We, therefore, feel
compelled to give it that construction ourselves and so construe it
that there can be no doubt as to its constitutionality." Here we have
a plain case of the United States Supreme Court declaring an act
severable because thereby it could apparently justify as
constitutional a measure depriving the Negroes of civil and political
rights, whereas in some other cases it has held other acts not
severable to reach the same end.

The court continued its reactionary course. In _Chiles_ v. _Chesapeake
and Ohio R. R. Company_[44] the court reiterated that "Congressional
inaction is equivalent to a declaration that a carrier may, by its
regulations, separate white and Negro interstate passengers. In
_McCabe_ v. _Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company_,[45]
Justice Hughes giving the opinion of the court, followed the _Plessy_
v. _Ferguson_ decision. He did not believe, moreover, "that the
contention that an act though fair on its face may be so unequally and
oppressively administered by the public authorities as to amount to an
unconstitutional discrimination by the State itself, is applicable
where it is the administration of the provisions of a