Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1958

Cooper v. Aaron

358 U.S. 1 | 78 S. Ct. 1401 | 3 L. Ed. 2d 5 | 1958 U.S. LEXIS 657 | 79 Ohio Law. Abs. 452

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Takeaway

In short, this case confirms that states and their officials must obey the Supreme Court's constitutional rulings and may not defeat constitutional rights through resistance, delay, or claims of nullification.

Background

After Brown v. Board of Education held state-sponsored school segregation unconstitutional, the Little Rock School Board adopted a gradual desegregation plan. The plan began with admission of nine Black students to Central High School in September 1957 and had previously been approved by the federal district court.

Arkansas officials actively opposed the plan. The Governor deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering Central High, and state political officials promoted resistance to Brown. After a federal court enjoined the Governor and Guard officers, hostile crowds and violence continued. President Eisenhower ultimately sent federal troops, and eight of the nine students completed the school year at Central High.

In February 1958, the School Board and superintendent sought a two-and-one-half-year suspension of desegregation. Although the district court found the Board had acted in good faith and that turmoil, violence, and disruption had harmed the school, it granted the requested delay. The Eighth Circuit reversed. The Supreme Court granted review on an expedited schedule and unanimously affirmed the Eighth Circuit, immediately reinstating the desegregation orders.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a federal court could suspend Little Rock's court-approved desegregation plan because public hostility, violence, and educational disruption made implementation difficult.

Holding

No. The constitutional rights recognized in Brown could not be postponed because state-supported resistance and disorder had made compliance difficult.

Reasoning

Brown II allowed lower courts to consider genuine administrative obstacles in moving toward desegregation, but it required a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance. Any additional time had to be necessary in the public interest and consistent with good-faith compliance at the earliest practicable date. Hostility to desegregation was not a permissible justification for delay.

The Court accepted both the School Board's good faith and the district court's findings that Central High had experienced serious disorder and educational harm. But the record showed that Arkansas legislators and executive officials had created or encouraged the resistance by opposing Brown, enacting obstructive measures, deploying the National Guard, and failing to use state authority to preserve order.

The School Board's good faith could not legally excuse a delay where other state actors had made compliance difficult. For Fourteenth Amendment purposes, local school officials were agents of the State, and Arkansas could not rely on the consequences of its own unlawful resistance as a basis for depriving Black students of their constitutional rights.

Law and order cannot be preserved by surrendering constitutional rights to violence. Permitting a suspension under these circumstances would reward official obstruction and allow the State indirectly to accomplish the racial segregation that Brown forbade directly.

Issue #2

Whether Arkansas officials were bound to obey Brown and federal court orders implementing Brown, notwithstanding their disagreement with the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretation.

Holding

Yes. The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution in Brown was binding supreme law, and state legislators, executive officials, and judges could not nullify or resist it.

Reasoning

Article VI makes the Constitution the supreme law of the land and requires state officers to take an oath to support it. Under Marbury v. Madison, it is the province and duty of the federal judiciary to say what the law is; therefore, the Court's interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in Brown bound the States.

A State acts through all of its branches and officers. Thus, the Equal Protection Clause prohibits discriminatory conduct by state legislatures, executives, courts, local school boards, and other state agents, regardless of the form in which the State attempts to deny constitutional rights.

State officers could criticize Brown, seek reconsideration through lawful litigation, pursue legislation where constitutionally available, or seek a constitutional amendment. They could not obstruct federal court judgments or claim a power to nullify the Court's constitutional rulings. Allowing a governor or legislature to do so would make state officials, rather than the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

The Court unanimously reaffirmed Brown. State responsibility for public education did not diminish the State's duty to operate schools consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment, including the right of students not to be excluded from state-supported schools on racial grounds.

Concurrences

Justice Frankfurter

Reasoning

Justice Frankfurter joined the Court's opinion but wrote separately to emphasize the rule-of-law stakes. In his view, Little Rock's gradual, court-approved plan had begun a process through which the community could adjust to constitutional change. That process was disrupted not by unavoidable local conditions, but by state officials' use of governmental power to obstruct the law.

He stressed that Arkansas was legally and morally responsible for disabling its own school board from fulfilling its constitutional duty. To treat disorder deliberately fostered or encouraged by the State as a reason to halt desegregation would mean that law must yield to force, thereby legitimizing official lawlessness.

Frankfurter distinguished lawful dissent from defiance. Citizens and officials remained free to criticize judicial decisions and to seek change through ordinary legal and political processes, but they could not actively obstruct the Constitution as authoritatively interpreted by the federal judiciary.

He also stressed the responsibility of public officials in a democratic system to help shape public understanding rather than merely reflect inflamed public sentiment. Suspending desegregation in response to resistance would validate the resistance, invite further delays, and weaken the constitutional system that depends on state and local officials supporting federal law.