Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Constitution prohibits segregated public schools in the District of Columbia. Originally argued on December 10–11, 1952, a year before Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling was reargued on December 8–9, 1953, and was unanimously decided on May 17, 1954, the same day as Brown. The Bolling decision was supplemented in 1955 with the second Brown opinion, which ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed". In Bolling, the Court did not address school desegregation in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which applies only to the states, but rather held that school segregation was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court observed that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution lacked an Equal Protection Clause, as in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, the Court held that the concepts of equal protection and due process are not mutually exclusive, establishing the reverse incorporation doctrine.
Background
In Carr v. Corning (1950), the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (with Judges Bennett Champ Clark, Henry White Edgerton, and E. Barrett Prettyman presiding) affirmed a ruling of the District of Columbia U.S. District Court that upheld school segregation in the District citing seven laws passed by Congress from 1862 through 1874 that had segregated the District of Columbia Public Schools. Under Article I, Section VIII of the U.S. Constitution, "Congress shall have the power ... [t]o exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District ... as may, by Cession of particular States... become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for ... needful buildings". On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act passed by the 37th United States Congress that ended slavery in the District of Columbia.
On May 20, 1862, Lincoln signed into law the Washington County Public Primary Schools Act which required that a special property tax be levied on all taxable property owned by non-white persons in Washington County "for the purpose of initiating a system of education of colored children in said county". The next day, Lincoln signed the Georgetown and Washington Cities Colored Children Education Act into law that required the municipal governments of Georgetown and Washington City to deposit 10 percent of the property tax revenue collected from non-white property owners into separate funds to be "appropriated for the purpose of initiating a system of primary schools for the education of colored children residing in said cities" under the control of the boards of trustees of the public schools in Georgetown and Washington City, and that the boards of trustees "shall possess all the powers, exercise the same functions, and have the same supervision over the schools provided for in this act as are now exercised by them over the public schools now existing in said cities".
However, on July 11, 1862, Lincoln signed the Georgetown and Washington Cities Colored Children Schools Act into law that created a separate board of trustees for non-white schools in Georgetown and Washington City who would "possess all the powers and perform all the duties conferred upon and required of the trustees of public schools in the said cities". On June 25, 1864, Lincoln signed into law the Washington County Public Schools Act passed by the 38th United States Congress that permitted "any white resident of said county shall be privileged to place his or her child or ward, at any one of the schools provided for the education of white children in said county he or she may think proper to select … and any colored resident shall have the same rights with respect to colored schools", and repealed the special property tax on non-white property owners in Georgetown and Washington City to fund non-white schools and instead required that the municipal governments of Georgetown and Washington City to appropriate from the general funds of their schools districts funding to non-white schools proportionate to the percentage of the enrollment in the districts non-white students constituted.