caselaws

CASE BRIEF:

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is a landmark judgment delivered by the
Supreme Court of the United States in 1954. The case dealt with the constitutionality
of racial segregation in public schools under the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. At the time, many states in the U.S. followed the doctrine of
“separate but equal,” established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which allowed
segregation so long as facilities for different races were supposedly equal. In reality,
schools meant for Black children were consistently inferior in quality, infrastructure,
and accessibility.
The case arose when Oliver Brown and other parents challenged the denial of
admission of their children to white public schools located closer to their homes.
Instead, their children were forced to attend distant segregated schools solely because
of their race. Similar cases from different states were combined and heard together by
the Supreme Court, as they raised the same constitutional question regarding equality
and discrimination in public education.
The main issue before the Court was whether segregation of children in public
schools on the basis of race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. The states argued that segregation was lawful and constitutionally valid
under existing precedent, claiming that facilities provided to both races were equal.
The petitioners, on the other hand, contended that segregation itself created inequality
by causing psychological harm to Black children and denying them equal educational
opportunities.
The Supreme Court, in a unanimous judgment delivered by Chief Justice Earl Warren,
held that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The Court observed
that education is a fundamental function of the State and plays a crucial role in
shaping citizenship. It reasoned that even if physical facilities were comparable,
segregation generated a feeling of inferiority among Black children that affected their
hearts and minds in a way unlikely to be undone.
The Court famously declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently
unequal.” On this basis, it held that segregation in public education violates the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and rejected the “separate but equal”
doctrine in the context of public schools. The judgment marked a turning point in
constitutional law and laid the foundation for desegregation and the Civil Rights
Movement in the United States, influencing equality jurisprudence across the world.