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Citizens in the US voted for Jim Crow and it was only overturned via non-democratic means. Were these laws moral at the time?

To take a modern example, will Maharashtra's proposed law against Biharis driving autos be moral if it has popular support? (Background: Marathi nationalists have - this year - proposed Jim Crow type laws against non Marathis driving taxis/auto rickshaws.)

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The Jim Crow laws were most certainly overturned through democratic means, namely the 1964 Civil Rights Act (an act of the elected legislature) invoking the Commerce Clause (part of the Constitution) and 1965 Voting Rights Act. If you mean they were not repealed through by referendum or plebiscite, that is true, but neither were they enacted through direct voting. This is the case with most laws in the US.

I'm guessing by 'non-democratic' means, he was referring to Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

I actually misremembered which was ended by law and which by judicial fiat. Regardless, the moral question of whether they were justified when democratically popular remains.

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