The fourteenth amendment has played a key part in ending segregation, but do you know how this amendment affected public schools? The fourteenth amendment required schools to end discrimination and segregation.

Evidence for this is prevalent in the Brown v. Board of Education supreme court case. Jim Crow laws are a large contribution to why schools were segregated in the first place. Then came Plyler v.

Doe which allowed illegal immigrants equality while attending public schools. Also, the PARC v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was a case that gave disabled children the right to a free public education. The main amendment being used to win these court cases is the fourteenth amendment. The fourteenth amendment was ratified in 1868 and has five parts, with a total of 425 words. This amendment states that we are protected against stated creating laws that violate our rights.

It also gives all citizens the right to equal protection and the proper trial process. If someone is born on American soil, they get American citizenship. The fourteenth amendment has allowed lots of equality between races. The primary reason that the fourteenth amendment was ratified was to give freed slaves equal civil rights. This amendment has also been cited in more supreme court cases than any other amendment. Most cases involve some sort of discrimination against someone based on their traits. The most famous case using the fourteenth amendment in likely Brown v.

Board of Education. Despite the 14th amendment many different races were still treated unfairly. In fact, in many southern states there were laws to keep blacks and white separate. The supreme court case Brown v. Board of Education had a goal to end segregation in schools.

Brown v. board of education was actually five separate court cases that were put under one name. the court cases include brown v. Board of education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis V, Board of education of prince Edward county, Bolling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Belton.

Each case had different circumstances, but the main goal was to end segregation in schools. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP legal defense were the attorneys on the case. Although he argued a variety of legal issued, the one mostly used my Marshall was that segregated schools were constitutionally unequal because it violated the fourteenth amendment. He also argues that black children were treated subordinate to white students, based on multiple sociological tests. The supreme court justices could not come to a decision by June of 1953 which was the end of the term. They decided to rehear the case in December of that year. However, the chief justice Fred Vinson died and was then replaced by Governor Earl Warren of California.

Earl Warren was able to bring the Justices to unanimously declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. They expected the ruling to be controversial and opposed, especially in the southern states. Because of this they waited to implement the ruling. The supreme court asked the attorney generals of each state to come up with plans on how to go about desegregating schools. On May 31, 1955 the justices gave a plan on how to start desegregation. The plan was to proceed with lots of speed. While it took years for schools to truly become integrated, Brown v.

Board of Education was a great start and a great way to get the ball rolling when it came to not only school integration but was also an important step in the civil rights movement as a whole.Before 1971 children with mental disabilities could be denied public education, but thanks to the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC), mentally disabled children can no longer be denied public schooling. PARC took the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to court for a state law that allowed public schools to deny disabled children. This law was regularly used to deny students that these schools considered a nuisance to integrate into the classroom.

PARC was a large reason why denying disabled children from schools and preventing them from getting and education is now illegal. Before this case, there were also many other states that had laws preventing disabled children from getting and education. PARC argued that the children can only benefit from getting a special education and not giving it to them can only have negative consequences. With an education these disabled students could get to a pint where they can somewhat take care of themselves. Because the evidence presented was so strong a decision was made in early 1972.

U.S. district court judge Masterson decided that these laws were unconstitutional. This was the first step in allowing children that have mental disabilities to attend the same public schools as every other kid. Before 1982, the year when Plyler v. Doe was put into action, some Texas local governments were denying funding for undocumented students and charging them a tuition fee of $1000.00 per year. The original policy stated that the school district could withhold funds for educating children who were not legally documented within the United States.

It allowed these districts to determine who was denied access to enrollment. The Supreme Court found this policy to be a violation of the students fourteenth amendment. The Supreme Court stated that children were powerless, they had no control that their parents had crossed the border illegally. In conclusion, the fourteenth amendment allowed student of all different races and students with disabilities to attend public schools. Although it took many years, schools in the U.

S. are no longer segregated. Hopefully the fourteenth amendment can be used by many more equality seeking people to allow everyone equal rights, whether it be in public schools or not. Equality is something everybody deserves and maybe something, one day, everyone will have.