Boilling v. Sharpe

Facts of the Case

The schools that the African American students attended were in poor physical condition and lacked adequate educational materials. The students, who were initially led by Thurgood Marshall's mentor Charles Hamilton Houston, disputed the validity of segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia. When Houston became ill, he was replaced by James Nabrit, a colleague from Howard University.

The students, led by Nabrit, continued their charge that the segregation practiced in the District of Columbia deprived them of due process of law under the Fifth Amendment; because the Fifth, rather than the Fourteenth applies to the federal government, the plaintiffs proceeded under it. School officials barred the African American students' admission to the White public schools solely because of their race.

In their quest to gain admission, the African American students filed suit in the federal trial court for the District of Columbia. After the court dismissed their complaint in light of a recent ruling that segregated schools were constitutional in the District of Columbia, Nabrit filed an appeal. Due to the importance of the constitutional question presented, the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari before the Court of Appeals rendered its judgment. The Court was interested in considering the Boiling case along with the four other segregation cases already filed. The other segregation cases and Boiling were linked in the oral arguments under the now famous Brown.

The Court's Ruling

In Brown, the Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools. Yet, the legal question in the District of Columbia was somewhat different, as the Fifth Amendment, which is applicable in the District of Columbia, does not contain an Equal Protection Clause like that of the Fourteenth Amendment. To be sure, the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to the states.

In its analysis, the Supreme Court pointed out that the concepts of equal protection and due process both have foundations in the American ideal of fairness and are not mutually exclusive. In order to avoid future confusion, the High Court definitively stated that these two concepts are not always interchangeable. “That is, ‘equal protection of the laws’ is a more explicit safeguard of prohibited unfairness than ‘due process of law.’ But, as this Court recognized, discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process” (p. 499).

The Supreme Court noted that classifications based solely on race must be carefully scrutinized. With respect to this issue, the Court made an interesting reference to, but did not specifically mention, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which not only made popular the principle “separate but equal” but supposedly prohibited discrimination. Plessy is viewed as promoting discrimination today even though it was not regarded as such at the time.

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