Morgan consulted with attorneys to appeal her conviction and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund took up her case. She was represented by William H. Hastie, the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and later a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and Thurgood Marshall, legal counsel of the NAACP. Her case, "Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia," , was appealed to the United States Supreme Court. In 1946 in a landmark decision, the Court ruled that the Virginia law was unconstitutional, as the Commerce clause protected interstate traffic. But neither Virginia nor other states observed the ruling and it was not enforced for decades.