Bolling v. Sharpe

Bolling v. Sharpe
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 10–11, 1952 Reargued December 8–9, 1953 Decided May 17, 1954
Full case name	Spottswood Thomas Bolling, et al.,Petitioners, v. C. Melvin Sharpe, President of the District of Columbia Board of Education, et al.
Citations	347 U.S. 497 (more) 74 S. Ct. 693; 98 L. Ed. 884; 1954 U.S. LEXIS 2095; 53 Ohio Op. 331
Prior history	Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Holding
Racial segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia is a denial to Negro children of the due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Warren, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. V

Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case which deals with civil rights, specifically, segregation in the District of Columbia's public schools. Originally argued on December 10–11, 1952, a year before Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), Bolling was reargued on December 8 and 9, 1953, and was unanimously decided on May 17, 1954, the same day as Brown. The Bolling decision was supplemented in 1955 with the second Brown opinion, which ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed." Bolling did not address school desegregation in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which applies only to the states, but held that school segregation was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In Bolling, the Court observed that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution lacked an Equal Protection Clause, as in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court held, however, that the concepts of Equal Protection and Due Process are not mutually exclusive.

Beginning in late 1949, a group of parents from the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., calling themselves the Consolidated Parents Group, petitioned the Board of Education of the District of Columbia to open the nearly completed John Phillip Sousa Junior High as an integrated school. The school board denied the petition and the school opened, admitting only whites. On September 11, 1950, Gardner Bishop, Nicholas Stabile and the Consolidated Parents Group attempted to get eleven African-American students (including the case's plaintiff, Spottswood Bolling) admitted to the school, but were refused entry by the school's principal.