Question

The 1950 Supreme Court decision to ban “separate but equal” law schools in Texas

Answer 1

In the 1950, Supreme Court decided to ban “separate but equal” doctrine of law schools in Texas, because:

Answer: 'forced graduate schools across the country to integrate.'

The Supreme Court decided that racial divisions where unconstitutional between white and black students in public schools across the country. This decision was motivated by a case involving a black man, Mr. Sweatt, who had his admission denied by the School of Law of the University of Texas.

Answer 2

Answer:  forced graduate schools across the country to integrate.

The 1950 Supreme Court decision in Sweatt v. Painter was specifically about one case regard to access to the law school at the University of Texas, but as a Supreme Court decision it had application to graduate schools elsewhere also.  It also was a case that was a building block to a future case that would apply the same principle across all of education in the United States.

Details:

The case of Sweatt v. Painter (1950), challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine regarding racial segregated schooling which had been asserted by an earlier case, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Heman Marion Sweatt was a black man who was not allowed admission into  the School of Law of the University of Texas.  Theophilus Painter was the president of the University of Texas at the time.  So that's where the names in the lawsuit came from.

In the case, which made its way to the US Supreme Court, the ultimate decision was that forcing Mr. Sweatt to attend law school elsewhere or in a segregated program at the University of Texas failed to meet the "separate but equal" standard, because other options such as those would have  lesser facilities, and he would be excluded from interaction with future lawyers who were attending the state university's main law school, available only to white students.  The school experience would need to be truly equal in order for the "separate but equal" policy to be valid.

In 1954, another Supreme Court decision went even further. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka extended civil liberties to all Americans in regard to access to all levels of education.  The Plessy v. Ferguson case had said that separate, segregated public facilities were acceptable as long as the facilities offered were equal in quality.  In Brown v. Board of Education, segregation was shown to create inequality, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled segregation to be unconstitutional.  After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, there was a struggle to get states to implement the new policy of desegregated schools, but eventually they were compelled to do so.