« (d) Should the Court of Justice refer the courts of first instance instructed to issue decrees in such cases and, if so, what general instructions should the judgments of that Court contain and what procedures should the courts of first instance follow in order to arrive at the specific conditions of the more detailed decrees? » The Topeka Brown case is important because it helped convince the court that even though physical facilities and other « tangible » factors were the same, segregation still deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities. « Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. » – Chief Justice Earl Warren, Opinion on Segregated Laws Delivered May 1954 The events relevant to this particular case first occurred in 1951, when a public school district in Topeka, Kansas, refused to enroll Oliver Brown`s daughter in the school closest to her home, and instead demanded that she enroll in a more distant school. Oliver Brown and his daughter were black. The Brown family, along with twelve other local black families, filed a class action lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education in federal court in similar circumstances, arguing that the segregation policy of forcing black students to attend separate schools was unconstitutional. The United States However, the Kansas District Court ruled against the Browns, setting the precedent for the 1896 Supreme Court decision in plessy v. Ferguson, who ruled that racial segregation does not violate the equality clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as long as the facilities and situations are the same, hence the doctrine known as « separate, but also. » Following this decision of the Kansas District Court, the Browns, represented by Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel of the NAACP, appealed to the Supreme Court. In each case, Black minors, through their legal representatives, seek the assistance of the courts to obtain admission to public schools in their community on a non-segregated basis. In any event, in the Kansas case, Brown v. Board of Education, the applicants are black children of primary school age residing in Topeka. They filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas to enforce a Kansas law that allows cities with more than 15,000 residents, but does not require them to maintain separate school facilities for black and white students. Kan.Gen.Stat.
§ 72-1724 (1949). Under this authority, the Topeka Board of Education decided to establish separate primary schools. However, other public schools in the community operate on a non-segregated basis. However, the three-judge District Court, under 28 U.S.C. § §§ 2281 and 2284, concluded that segregation in public education had a negative effect on black children, refused to grant relief on the grounds that black and white schools were essentially the same in terms of buildings, transportation, curricula and teachers` academic qualifications. 98 F. Supp. 797. The case in this case is under direct appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1253.
In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The 1954 decision stated that separate educational institutions for white and African-American students were inherently unequal. The school board argued that it was consistent with the original plan to abolish racial segregation, which was approved by the District Court on October 28, 1955 and fully implemented on September 1, 1961. Because junior high schools were removed from racial segregation before Brown in the early 1940s and high school was never separated, they were not considered part of the court`s initial order. In addition, the school board argued that the District Court « has exclusive jurisdiction to determine whether or not the Topeka school system violates the final decision order, and the court approved the racial segregation plan. » HEW`s lawyer disagreed, pointing out that « although the original plaintiffs in our case only attacked segregation at the primary school level, HEW was tasked with investigating discrimination in all its aspects at all levels of the public school system. » In the meantime, two other class actions related to illegal racial segregation were filed on August 8, 1979 (Miller v. Board of Education) and September 7, 1979 (Chapman v.
Board of Education). Segregation was not unconstitutional because it may have caused psychological feelings of inferiority. Public school systems that separated blacks and provided them with superior educational resources that made blacks feel « superior » to whites sent to smaller schools would violate the Fourteenth Amendment, whether white students felt stigmatized or not, just like school systems where racial positions are reversed. The injury or psychological benefit is irrelevant. These considerations apply with added force to primary and secondary school children. Separating them from other similar ages and similar qualifications based on their race alone creates a sense of inferiority in terms of status in the community that can affect their hearts and minds in ways that are unlikely to be defeated.