The Equal Protection Clause Amendment to the Constitution

The Equal Protection clause essentially guarantees that persons who are similarly situated will be treated similarly.

The primary issue in the area of comfortable protection is the effect of government consummation upon individuals: does this action detach against one group of individuals and not another because of round invariant characteristic of the first group? This issue can be divided into two questions: (1) Was there government action? (2) Did this action discriminate? The answer to the second question is usually the master(prenominal) concentre of an inquiry. With regard to HBCs, the answer is yes but there may have been a legally valid reason for the dissimilitude. This has been the main focus of cost cases involving HBCs and will be the main focus of this chapter.

However, the first question is important for establishing the setting of the discrimination. Throughout nearly of the post-bellum period, discrimination only ran afoul of equal protection if it resulted from some government action. This did not mean that the government had to actively ensnarl in the discrimination, but that the operator engaged in the discrimination was somehow acting under the color of government. This often meant that the actor was receiving financial support from the government.

This is an important issue for colleges

Sanders v. Ellington, 288 F. Supp. 937 (M.D. Tenn. 1968).

Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938), reh'g denied, 305 U.S. 676 (1939).

The first cases filed aft(prenominal) the chocolate-brown decision dealt with the establishment or expanding upon of historically clean-living colleges in areas which contained HBCs. In atomic number 13 narrate Teachers Association v. aluminium Public School and College Authority, (hereinafter ASTA) a black teachers organization sought-after(a) to prevent the establishment of an Auburn University branch in Montgomery, Alabama, where the Alabama State Teachers College, an HBC, was located. The plaintiffs said that the new branch would attract fair students away from the HBC, interfering with Alabama's desegregation efforts. The U.S.

District homage, however, ruled against the plaintiffs, last-place that the new branch would be operated in a non-segregated manner. The court rejected the standard articulated by the Supreme Court in the elementary and secondary school cases. Instead, it said that since a student's choice of college was purely voluntary, the implementation of race-neutral admissions and faculty and staff hiring policies were sufficient to satisfy the desegregation obligation.

One of the longest court battles involving a HBC started in 1968, when a group of plaintiffs sought to prevent the enlargement of the Nashville branch of the University of Tennessee. Nashville was also the location of Tennessee State University, a HBC complete in 1912. The Nashville branch of the University of Tennessee had been established as an extension college in 1947, offering no spot programs. The proposed expansion was intended to establish degree programs. The plaintiffs argued that the new expansion plans would interfere with the efforts of Tennessee State University to attract white students. The United States intervened after the suit was filed.

The next case involving graduate schools was not filed until 1946. This case, Sipuel v. plank of Reg
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