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 is greater when it has the sanction of the
 law; for the policy of separating the races;
 is usually interpreted as denoting the
 inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of
 inferiority affects the motivation of a chiimd
 to learn. Segregation with the sanction of
 the law, therefore, has a tendency to retard
 the educational and mental development o1'
 Negro children and to deprive them of some of
 the benefits they would receive in a racially
 integrated school system. Whatever may have
 been the extent of psychoJogical knowledge at
 the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding
 is amply supported by modern authority
 (citing numerous scientific studies)°
 347 U.S. at 494 (emphasis added).
 While arbitrariness and irrationality may not be evident
 from the _iteral words of a statute, such arbitrariness and
 irrationality may be "demonstrate" by scientific or other
 empirical evidence. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this principJe
 in Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6, 90 S.Ct. 1532, 23 L.Ed.2d
 57 (1969). There the court was presented with a challenge to 21
 UoS.Co 176a, which provided that persons who possessed marijuana
 in the United States would be presumed to know that the marijuana
 had been illegally imported. After surveying a mass of reports,
 studies, and articJes by experts on the cultivation, importation,
 and distribution of marijuana, the court concluded that it could
 not be said that "... at least a majority of marijuana
 possessors have [earned of the foreign origin of their
 marijuana." Id. at p. 52. Accordingly, the court struck down
 the presumption as invalid, in light of the empiricaJ data. The
 court expressly stated:
 A statute based upon a legislative
 declaration of facts is subject to
 constitutional attack on the ground that the
 facts no Jonger exist; in ruJing upon such a
 challenge, a court must, of course, be free
 to reexamine the factual declaration°