D. Kansas Opinion of U.S. District Court August (3,) (1951)

Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, or Brown as it is commonly known, is one of the most significant civil rights decisions of the twentieth century. With this decision, the Supreme Court declared that the practice of segregating children into separate schools based on race was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown overruled the Court's prior decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had upheld segregation of the races so long as the facilities provided to each race were separate but equal. As a number of opinions* and briefs* in Brown demonstrate, the Court struggled with the issues presented in the case. The Court even took the extraordinary step of asking the parties for additional argument—twice—on the power and the ability of the Court to resolve the issues before it. Even today, the existence of schools with disproportionate numbers of students of one race or another continues to pose difficulties for courts and legislatures under Brown.