Education Discrimination

Item set

• Clark v. Board of School Directors (1868)
  In this case, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of students based on race was unconstitutional. It was the first and only 19th century court to overturn school segregation.
• Smith v. Directors of Independent School Dist. of Keokuk (1875)
  In this case, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's ruling that the Keokuk school district could not refuse to admit a Black student based on race. Legal precedent for this case was set in the 1868 ruling in Clark v. Board of School Directors.
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
  In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court found that racial discrimination did not violate constitutional equal protection. This case established the principle of "separate but equal" which was overturned in 1965 by the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
• Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)
  In this case, the Supreme Court determined that a Nebraska law prohibiting the teaching of minority languages in schools violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Nebraska law had been passed in 1919 after the First World War during a time of anti-immigration nativist sentiment in the U.S. and specified that no language other than English may be taught in Nebraska schools. The Supreme Court found that the Due Process Clause protected "the calling of modern language teachers" and "the opportunities of pupils to acquire knowledge."
• Roberto Alvarez, et al. v. E. L. Owen, et al. (1931)
  This case was the first successful school desegregation case in the United States, decided fifteen years before Brown v. Board of Education. When the school board in Lemon Grove, California, attempted to build a separate school for students of Mexican origin, the court ruled that the segregation violated state laws which considered people of Mexican descent to be white.
• Mendez v. Westminster (1947)
  Menedez v. Westminster found educational segregation toward Latino students unconstitutional.
• Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
  In this case, the Supreme Court held that separate Black law schools in Texas were not equal in quality to white-only law schools. Sweatt v. Painter set important precedent for the decision in Brown v. Board of Education that would come four years later.
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
  The Supreme Court found in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This landmark case overturned the precedent created by the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and ended the Jim Crow era.
• Green v. County School Board (1968)
  In this follow-up case to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court addressed the "freedom-of-choice" plans created by school boards to resist compliance with the Court's mandate in Brown v. Board of Education (1955). In Green v. County School Board, the court held that the Virginia school board's plan to allow students to choose their own school failed to dismantle the discriminatory school system and burdened students and their parents with a responsibility the 1955 Brown decision placed on the school board.
• Swann et al. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education et al. (1971)
  In this case, the Supreme Court addressed busing as a means of integrating schools. After a federal district court found that the North Carolina school system's zoning-based desegregation plan was ineffectual, the court appointed an expert to develop an alternative plan. The new plan required the busing of students to various schools in order to achieve desegregation, which the Supreme Court held as an acceptable "remedial technique" to that end. The decision was eventually abrogated in Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (2002), where the court found that the previously instituted remedial techniques had been successful and were no longer necessary.
• Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
  Title IX is a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools or education programs that receive funding from the federal government. Since the passage of this act, the number of female students participating in organized sports programs has increased. Numerous court decisions have questioned the scope of Title IX over the years, and the U.S. Department of Education which oversees Title IX has continued to issue guidance on its protections against sexual harassment and sexual violence, as well as discrimination based on a student's gender identity.
• San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973)
  In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that state policies which base public school funding on local property taxes do not violate the 14th Amendment, as education is not a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. The court declared, "at least where wealth is involved, the Equal Protection Clause does not require absolute equality or precisely equal advantages." Consequently, state not federal courts became the venue for lawsuits challenging conditions resulting in separate and unequal education.
• Lau v. Nichols (1974)
  Using the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court determined that the San Francisco school system must provide education to non-English-speaking Chinese students. By denying Chinese students English language education, the Court ruled that San Francisco was discriminating against them based on race.
• Serna v. Portales Municipal Schools (1974)
  In an education discrimination case similar to Lau v. Nichols, this New Mexico case alleged that children with Spanish surnames do not statistically reach the same achievement levels as students with Anglo surnames. The ruling from the Court of Appeals provided solutions to limit future discrimination.
• Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)
  Overturned by the Harvard and UNC v. Students for Fair Admissions decision, the Supreme Court in University of California v. Bakke ruled that college admissions were allowed to take race into account.
• Plyler v. Doe (1982)
  In this Supreme Court case, the court ruled that Texas could not withhold funding or deny enrollment in public schools to undocumented children. The court ruled that Texas education laws withholding funds for educating children not "legally admitted" to the country and permitting school districts to deny their enrollment violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
• United States v. Virginia et al. (1996)
  In this case, the Supreme Court declared that the Virginia Military Institute's single-sex, male-only military education violated the Equal Protection clause. Virginia's parallel educational alternative for women, Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership, did not match VMI's rigor, prestige, or alumni support, so women's exclusion from VMI was classified as sex-based discrimination.
• Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
  In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the decision in University of California v. Bakke (1978), allowing a narrow use of race in admissions decisions. The decision to uphold affirmative action continued to protect the gains made by minorities following Brown v. Board of Education (1954). This precedent was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2023 with their decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
• Gratz v. Bollinger (2003)
  In the case of Gratz v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court considered the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy and found that race was too significant a factor in admissions decisions.
• Fisher v. University of Texas (2016)
  This Supreme Court case upheld the admissions policies of the University of Texas using the strict scrutiny criteria established by Fisher v. University of Texas (2013). It was later overturned by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023).
• Executive Order 14021 - Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free From Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity (2021)
  In this executive order, President Joe Biden declared that under his administration, "all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex," including sexual harassment and sexual violence, as well as discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The order directed federal agencies to review all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions to ensure they are consistent with this order and to extend such protections if they are not. President Donald Trump rescinded this order on January 20, 2025, with his own Executive Order 14168.
• Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard (2023)
  This Supreme Court case considered whether Harvard's admissions process violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The court decided that the race-based admissions system did not meet the strict scrutiny required to allow a race-based system, and held as unconstitutional the consideration of an applicant's race as a factor in making an admissions decision that benefits diversity.