Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/21

Rh dedicated belief.”); (, concurring). The Court reiterated that rule just one year later, holding that “full compliance” with Brown required schools to admit students “on a racially nondiscriminatory basis.” Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300–301 (1955). The time for making distinctions based on race had passed. Brown, the Court observed, “declar[ed] the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.” Id., at 298.

So too in other areas of life. Immediately after Brown, we began routinely affirming lower court decisions that invalidated all manner of race-based state action. In Gayle v. Browder, for example, we summarily affirmed a decision invalidating state and local laws that required segregation in busing. 352 U. S. 903 (1956) (per curiam). As the lower court explained, “[t]he equal protection clause requires equality of treatment before the law for all persons without regard to race or color.” Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707, 715 (MD Ala. 1956). And in Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Dawson, we summarily affirmed a decision striking down racial segregation at public beaches and bathhouses maintained by the State of Maryland and the city of Baltimore. 350 U. S. 877 (1955) (per curiam). “It is obvious that racial segregation in recreational activities can no longer be sustained,” the lower court observed. Dawson v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 220 F. 2d 386, 387 (CA4 1955) (per curiam). “[T]he ideal of equality before the law which characterizes our institutions” demanded as much. Ibid.

In the decades that followed, this Court continued to vindicate the Constitution’s pledge of racial equality. Laws dividing parks and golf courses; neighborhoods and businesses; buses and trains; schools and juries were undone, all by a transformative promise “stemming from our American ideal of fairness”: “ ‘the Constitution … forbids … discrimination by the General Government, or by the States,