The U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark decision that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional, effectively overturning the "separate but equal" principle established in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their twenty children who had been denied access to Topeka's white schools due to racial segregation policies. The court ruled unanimously in 1954 that racial segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, asserting that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal and detrimental to minority children's development and education quality. This ruling paved the way for integration across all areas of public life, not just schooling, marking a significant victory in America’s civil rights movement.

The landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education did not have a dissenting opinion. The decision was unanimous, with all nine Justices agreeing that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion for a unanimous court which stated that "in the field of public education, 'separate but equal' has no place," because segregated schools are inherently unequal. This ruling overturned previous precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had upheld state-sponsored segregation under doctrine known as "separate but equal".