Brown v. Board of Education

[Emsworth]

This is a very easy question to answer (unlike the other question on Bolling): Brown was correctly decided. The segregation of students in state-run schools undoubtedly violated the equal protection clause. A18 has summarized the argument quite neatly above.

I think that point 3 is important, but even if the facilities were actually equal, the equal protection clause would have been violated. (In other words, "separate but equal" would be unconstitutional, even if the facilities were indeed equal.) "Equal protection of the law" does not mean just equal facilities, or equal access to government programs, for different races, but full and absolute equality. The very separation of the races constitutes the discrimination proscribed in Strauder.

[Emsworth]

But what about the type of separation we have today -- it is not imposed from the top down, as legislated segregation was, but effectively comes from the grass roots, the result of millions of individual decisions.

As long as it is not government-imposed, the equal protection clause is not implicated.