Gaines v. Miller, Administrator was a United States Supreme Court case that dealt with the issue of racial discrimination in higher education. The case was brought by Lloyd Gaines, an African American man who had been denied admission to the University of Missouri Law School due to its policy of racial segregation. Gaines argued that the policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the state of Missouri must either admit Gaines to the law school or provide him with an equivalent education elsewhere. The Court held that the state could not deny Gaines admission to the law school solely on the basis of his race. The decision in Gaines v. Miller, Administrator was a landmark ruling in the fight for racial equality in the United States. It was the first time the Supreme Court had ruled that a state must provide an equal education to African Americans. The ruling set a precedent for future cases involving racial discrimination in higher education, and it helped pave the way for the eventual desegregation of public schools in the United States.

In Gaines v. Miller, the Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether a state law that required African American students to attend separate schools from white students violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority opinion held that it did not violate this clause because Missouri had provided equal facilities for both races and thus there was no discrimination between them. However, Justice Harlan dissented from this ruling and argued that even if these facilities were equal in quality, they could never be truly equal as long as segregation existed between races. He believed that such laws created an atmosphere of inferiority among African Americans which undermined their rights to equality under the Constitution regardless of any tangible differences in quality or quantity of resources available to each race's respective school systems.