Sweatt v. Painter

Sweatt v. Painter, et al.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 4, 1950 Decided June 5, 1950
Full case name	Heman Marion Sweatt v. Theophilus Shickel Painter
Citations	339 U.S. 629 (more) 70 S. Ct. 848; 94 L. Ed. 1114; 1950 U.S. LEXIS 1809
Prior history	Cert. to the Supreme Court of Texas
Holding
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that petitioner be admitted to the University of Texas Law School.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Vinson, joined by unanimous

Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was influential in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education four years later.

The case involved a black man, Heman Marion Sweatt, who was refused admission to the School of Law of the University of Texas, whose president was Theophilus Painter, on the grounds that the Texas State Constitution prohibited integrated education.

The state district court in Travis County, instead of granting the plaintiff a right of mandamus, continued the case for six months. This allowed the state time to create a law school only for black students, which it established in Houston, Texas, rather than in Austin. The 'separate' law school and the college became the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University (known then as "Texas State University for Negroes").

The trial court decision was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court denied writ of error on further appeal. Sweatt and the NAACP next went to the federal courts, and the case ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Robert L. Carter and Thurgood Marshall presented Sweatt's case.