Landmark Supreme Court Case · Equal protection
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
- Decided
- 1954
- Vote
- 9–0
- Opinion
- Chief Justice Earl Warren
- Constitutional provisions
Facts of the case
Linda Brown, a Black third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, had to travel to a distant segregated school instead of attending a nearby school for white children. Her father, Oliver Brown, and other parents sued. The Supreme Court combined her case with similar cases from South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued for the families.
The constitutional question
Does state-mandated racial segregation of public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, even if the facilities are equal?
The decision
Yes. A unanimous Court held that segregated public schools are "inherently unequal" and violate the Equal Protection Clause, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson in public education. (A companion case, Bolling v. Sharpe, applied the same result to Washington, D.C., under the Fifth Amendment.)
The Court's reasoning
Education is the foundation of good citizenship. Warren wrote that separating children "solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community."
Why it matters
It was a turning point for the civil rights movement. In Brown II (1955), the Court ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed," but many states resisted. One result was the 1957 Little Rock crisis, when President Eisenhower sent federal troops. Brown paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In the Court's words
in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, unanimous opinion