Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

United States v. Fordice

In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Fordice, a case involving discrimination on the basis of race in the state university system of Mississippi. Justice Byron White delivered the opinion of the Court, which found that a state has an affirmative duty to dismantle its segregated system even though the segregation was by choice rather than by law. The other judges either joined in this opinion or filed concurring opinions. Only Justice Antonin Scalia filed an opinion that was partly a dissent from Justice White's opinion. This entry describes the background of the case, the Court's decision, and the legal reasoning it followed in reaching its conclusion.

The Case and Early Rulings

According to the facts of Fordice, the State of Mississippi operated eight separate public postsec-ondary institutions. Four of the institutions, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, University of Southern Mississippi, and Delta State University, were established after the Civil War exclusively to educate Mississippi's Anglo-American (i.e., White) citizens. During the same period, Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, and Mississippi Valley State University were established to educate the state's African American citizens. When the case was filed, the universities remained segregated by institutional choice; there was no law that mandated desegregation.

Private citizens (mostly Mexican Americans) went to court to challenge this largely segregated higher-education system. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi (674 F. Supp. 1523) found that state officials had met their duty of desegregation. The citizens appealed this decision. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (893 F2d 732) at first reversed the District Court's decision but later it reheard the matter en banc and then affirmed the decision of the District Court (914 F.2d 676). The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to review the rulings.

The Supreme Court Ruling

In its Fordice decision, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the state of Mississippi to eliminate or reduce all the significant vestiges of its prior de jure segregated system of higher education. If it did not do so, the Court said, it would have to prove that sound educational policy and/or necessity warranted such non-action. The Court held that no racial identifiability of universities should be attributable to state action, and it interpreted state action in a broad sense.

Supreme Court Justice White held that “merely adopting and implementing race-neutral policies to govern college and university systems did not necessarily fulfill the state's affirmative obligation to disestablish the prior de jure segregated system.” Thus, the citizens' position was ultimately vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal victory can be traced back to three earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.

Case Precedents

In 1954, in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the U.S. Supreme court had examined the concept of “stigmatic injury” to American children in a segregated school system. Such injury is caused by the enforced separation of the two races for educational purposes, the Court found. After the Brown decision, de jure segregation was officially over. However, in certain U.S. states, significant effects of the prior de jure segregation persisted. In effect, a de facto segregated system of higher education, like the one that existed in Mississippi, could cause the “stigmatic injury” that Brown discussed.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution