Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case

A Landmark Civil Rights Fourteenth Amendment Case from 1954

Nov 10, 2009 Thomas Wyatt

Brown v. Board of Education was a major Supreme Court case from 1954, in which segregation was deemed not fitting to the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturned the decision made in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, which concluded that segregation was not unconstitutional, because different facilities for blacks and whites were "separate but equal." The Brown case is one of the landmark Supreme Court cases in American history.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution allows that under the laws of the country, no man shall be denied the protection or rights that another is granted. This notion, however, was not directly employed (in fact, it was almost directly ignored) until after the Brown case. "No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," the Equal Protection Clause reads (Cornell.edu).

Background of Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case, 1954

The United States Supreme Court had endorsed segregation with the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, and in the decades that followed no serious threat to the social policy was made. Segregation was deemed permissible by the court because the different facilities for blacks and whites, which were in no way equal, were said to be perfectly sufficient.

It was in Topeka, Kansas where this case began. A number of African-American parents of children who were only allowed to attend black schools filed a law suit against the city's board of education, requesting that racial segregation of public schools be outlawed. One of the plaintiffs in the case was Oliver Brown, who eventually brought his case to the state after his daughter was still refused enrollment at the nearby school that was only for white children. After being denied his request, Brown, with NAACP backing, went national.

The Landmark Fourteenth Amendment Civil Rights Case at the Supreme Court

Five cases were actually presented simultaneously to the court (Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Bolling v. Sharp, and Gebhart v. Belton, in addition to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka) at the time the court heard the Brown case, and all of these cases had a similar constitutional theme, which questioned whether or not any type of racial segregation violated the Fourteenth amendment.

Supreme Court Ruling in Brown v. Board of Education

Chief Justice Warren began the Supreme Court's ruling by designating the cause of the case. "In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis," Warren stated

(Case Law Legal Professional). "In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race."

The ruling was then made, which relied on the fact that segregation of public schools on the basis of race denied black children equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, which meant that in all instances, the prohibition of integration in public schools was impermissible. This case ended the legal segregation of schools. Furthermore, the court ordered desegregation nationwide.

The Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education was an important part of modern American civil rights advances. This Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights case put an end to legal segregation in schools, which had been practiced up to that point in the American South.

The copyright of the article Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case in Law, Crime & Justice is owned by Thomas Wyatt. Permission to republish Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education

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