Cumming v. Board of Education Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

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Cumming v. Board of Education | 175 U.S. 528 (1899)
In Plessy versus Ferguson, the Supreme Court held that a state law segregating White and Black people into separate but equal train cars didn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause. Three years later in Cumming versus Board of Education, the Court considered whether the Equal Protection Clause prohibited a board of education from providing White public high schools without also providing Black public high schools.
Georgia’s constitution and an 1872 state statute compelled local school boards to establish and maintain tax-funded public elementary schools for White and Black students in separate but equal facilities. These laws gave school boards discretion to create public high schools but didn’t require them to do so. Based on this authority, the Richmond County school board operated a few White high schools and one Black high school for several years. But by 1897, the Black elementary schools in Richmond couldn’t accommodate a growing number of Black students. The board didn’t have enough money to build additional schools or hire more teachers. So, it closed the 60-student Black high school and converted it to a Black elementary school for 300 students. That same year, the board imposed a tax to fund all the county’s public elementary schools and high schools. So, Joseph Cumming and two other tax-paying Black men with high-school-aged children sued the board. They alleged that the board violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by requiring Black citizens to pay taxes that funded White high schools but not Black high schools. And they asked the court to enjoin the board from operating the White high schools.
The court agreed with Cumming and issued the injunction. But the Georgia Supreme Court reversed, and Cumming appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
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