Equal Protection Analysis

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect African Americans from discrimination by the states in the aftermath of the Civil War. Since its adoption, the Equal Protection Clause [Page 308]has become one of the most important constitutional provisions for the protection of individual rights. In particular, the Equal Protection Clause has been an important concept in the law of public education.

In that context, the courts have invoked the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to prohibit the segregation of school children by race, to bar sex-based discrimination in educational settings, to guarantee access to the public ...