Brief Fact Summary. Black children were denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws that permitted or required segregation by race. The children sued.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. Separate but equal educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Issue. Do separate but equal laws in the area of public education deprive black children of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution (Constitution)?
Held. Yes.
Chief Justice Earl Warren (J. Warren) stated that even if the “tangible” factors of segregated schools are equal, to separate black children from others of similar age and qualifications solely on the basis of race, generates a feeling of inferiority with respect to their status in the community and may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.
The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity, or right, most valuable to the colored race, -- the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored, -- exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy, and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race.
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