Briggs v. Elliott

Briggs v. Elliott
Supreme Court of the United States
Decided January 28, 1952
Full case name	Harry Briggs Jr. et al. v. R.W. Elliott, chairman, et al.
Citations	342 U.S. 350 (more) 72 S. Ct. 327; 96 L. Ed. 2d 392; 1952 U.S. LEXIS 2486
Case history
Prior	June 23, 1951: Injunction to abolish segregation denied, injunction to equalize educational facilities granted (2–1), 98 F. Supp. 529 (E.D.S.C. 1951)
Subsequent	March 13, 1952: Judgment reinstated (3–0), 103 F. Supp. 920 (E.D.S.C. 1952) May 17, 1954: Reversed and remanded (9–0), sub. nom., Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). July 15, 1955: Decree entered, voiding South Carolina school segregation law as unconstitutional, and ordering schools integrated with all deliberate speed consistent with Brown (3-0), 132 F. Supp. 776 (E.D.S.C. 1955)
Holding
In order that the Supreme Court may have the benefit of the views of the district court upon the additional facts brought out in the appellees report on the implementation of district court's mandate to equalize segregated South Carolina schools, and that the district court may have the opportunity to take whatever action it may deem appropriate in light of that report, the judgment is vacated and the case is remanded for further proceedings.
Court membership
Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Robert H. Jackson · Harold H. Burton Tom C. Clark · Sherman Minton
Case opinions
Per curiam
Dissent	Black, joined by Douglas
Laws applied
28 U.S.C. (Supp. IV) § 1253, S.C. Const., Art. XI, § 7; S.C. Code § 5377 (1942)

Briggs v. Elliott, 342 U.S. 350 (1952), on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina.^[1] It was the first of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954),^[2] the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional by violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Following the Brown decision, the district court issued a decree that struck down the school segregation law in South Carolina as unconstitutional and required the state's schools to integrate. Harry and Eliza Briggs, Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine, and Levi Pearson were awarded Congressional Gold Medals posthumously in 2003.^[3]