The Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education by a 9–0 vote in 1954.
Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the unanimous opinion on May 17, 1954. The ruling held that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, overturning the constitutional basis of the “separate but equal” approach in public education.
The case combined challenges from Kansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, and Virginia. Oliver Brown was the named plaintiff in the Kansas case, filed after his daughter Linda Brown had to travel farther to attend a segregated Black school.
Brown did not immediately end school segregation. A follow-up ruling in 1955, commonly called Brown II, ordered desegregation with “all deliberate speed,” a phrase that allowed extensive resistance and delay.