Should Education be a Civil Right

In the Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, he mentioned a couple court cases. These court cases included Milliken v. Bradley (1974), San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). At the beginning of the book, Kozol mentioned Brown v. Board of Education (1954), stated that the “ separate but equal law” violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteen Amendment. Therefore, Brown v. Board of Education overturned the court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy v. Ferguson made segregation constitutional as long as the black and white facilities was equal to each other. The schools in Detroit, Michigan were racially imbalanced. There were way too many black students; nearly 90% of the students were black in the district schools of Detroit. On 1970, NAACP filed a lawsuit against Michigan state officials. NAACP argued that although segregation is not really happening but schools in Detroit were mostly black. NAACP’s goal was to achieve racial balance within the city’s schools. The court membership ruled 5-4 decision, holding that school district were not obligated to desegregate unless they have proof of racist intent. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), was a court case about how SAISD argues that it is not fair that poor district schools don’t get as much funding as other district schools just because their family are living in a poor neighborhood with low property tax. The court case ruled that the failing in distributing unequal funding did not violated the Fourteen Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because the state provides a set amount of funding for each district based on the number of student in the district. Justice Powell also stated that on the question of wealth and education, “the Equal Protection Clause does not require absolute equality or precisely equal advantages.”