In the Bailey v. Patterson case of 1961, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public transportation was unconstitutional and could not be enforced by any state law or local ordinance. The court held that it had been settled beyond debate since Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that racial segregation in public education violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and this principle extended to all forms of public transportation as well. This decision came after a group of African American citizens from Jackson, Mississippi sued city officials for enforcing laws requiring segregated seating on buses. The ruling reaffirmed previous decisions such as Morgan v Virginia (1946) and Boynton v Virginia (1960), which declared interstate bus segregation illegal under federal law.

In the dissenting opinion for Bailey et al. v. Patterson et al., Justice Harlan argued that the Supreme Court had overstepped its jurisdiction by deciding on a case that was still pending in lower courts, thereby violating principles of federalism and judicial restraint. He contended that it would have been more appropriate to allow state courts to resolve this matter first before escalating it to the Supreme Court level, especially given that there were no immediate or irreparable harms at stake which would necessitate such an intervention. Furthermore, he criticized his colleagues for their broad interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause as encompassing public transportation facilities since this could potentially lead to federal intrusion into other traditionally state-regulated areas like education and housing discrimination issues.