View source for Sweatt v. Painter

{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2023}}
{{More footnotes|date=February 2020}}
{{Infobox SCOTUS case
  |Litigants=Sweatt v. Painter, et al.
  |ArgueDate=April 4
  |ArgueYear=1950
  |DecideDate=June 5
  |DecideYear=1950
  |FullName=Heman Marion Sweatt v. Theophilus Shickel Painter
  |ParallelCitations=70 S. Ct. 848; 94 [[L. Ed.]] 1114; 1950 [[U.S. LEXIS]] 1809
  |USVol=339
  |USPage=629
  |Prior=Cert. to the Supreme Court of Texas
  |Subsequent=
  |Holding=Segregation as applied to the admissions processes for [[law school in the United States]] violates [[Equal Protection Clause]] of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]], because separate facilities in legal education are inherently unequal. Texas Supreme Court reversed.
 |Majority=Vinson
  |JoinMajority=''unanimous''
  |LawsApplied=
}}
'''''Sweatt v. Painter''''', 339 U.S. 629 (1950), was a [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] case that successfully challenged the "[[separate but equal]]" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]''. The case was influential in the landmark case of ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' four years later.

The case involved a [[African American|black]] man, [[Heman Marion Sweatt]], who was refused admission to the [[University of Texas School of Law|School of Law]] of the [[University of Texas]], whose president was [[Theophilus Painter]], on the grounds that the Texas State Constitution prohibited integrated education.<ref name=":0">339 U.S. [https://supreme.justia.com/us/339/629/case.html 629] (1950)</ref>  The Supreme Court ruled in favor of law student Sweatt, reasoning that the state's racially separate law school was in fact unequal.  Nonetheless, the Court limited its ruling in finding that it was not [yet] necessary to "reach [Sweatt]'s contention that ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' should be reexamined in the light of contemporary knowledge respecting the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment and the effects of racial segregation."<ref>339 U.S. at 636</ref>  The decision was delivered on the same day as another case involving similar issues, ''[[McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents]],'' also decided in favor of integrated graduate education.

==Procedural history==
The state district court in [[Travis County, Texas]], instead of granting the plaintiff a writ of ''[[mandamus]]'', continued the case for six months.  This allowed the state time to create a law school only for black students, which it established in [[Houston]], rather than in [[Austin, Texas|Austin]].  The 'separate' law school and the college became the [[Thurgood Marshall School of Law]] at [[Texas Southern University]] (known then as "Texas State University for Negroes").

The Dean of the Law School at the time was [[Charles T. McCormick]]. He wanted a separate law school for black students.

[[Texas Attorney General]] at the time was [[Price Daniel]] who advocated fiercely for racial segregation.

The trial court decision was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court denied ''[[error coram nobis|writ of error]]'' on further appeal.  Sweatt and the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People|NAACP]] next went to the federal courts, and the case ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.  [[Robert L. Carter]] and [[Thurgood Marshall]] presented Sweatt's case.<ref name=":0" />

==U.S. Supreme Court==
The Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision, saying that the separate school failed to qualify, both because of quantitative differences in facilities and experiential factors, such as its isolation from most of the future lawyers with whom its graduates would interact.  The court held that, when considering graduate education, experience must be considered as part of "substantive equality."<ref name=":0" />  The court's decision documented the differences between white and black facilities:
* The University of Texas Law School had 16 full-time and 3 part-time professors, while the black law school had 5 full-time professors.
* The University of Texas Law School had 850 students and a [[law library]] of 65,000 volumes, while the black law school had 23 students and a library of 16,500 volumes.
* The University of Texas Law School had [[moot court]] facilities, an [[Order of the Coif]] affiliation, and numerous graduates involved in public and private law practice, while the black law school had only one practice court facility and only one graduate admitted to the Texas Bar.

==Legacy==
On June 14, 2005, the Travis County Commissioners voted to rename the courthouse as The Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse in honor of Sweatt's endeavor and victory.

[[File:Robert Carter and William Treanor.jpg|thumb|Lead attorney on ''Sweatt'', Judge [[Robert L. Carter]], with the then-dean of [[Fordham Law School]], [[William Treanor]]]]

==See also==
{{Portal|Texas|Law|United States}}
*[[List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 339]]
* ''[[Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla.]]'' - {{ussc|332|631|1948}}
* ''[[McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents]]'' - {{ussc|339|637|1950}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite book|last1=Lavergne|first1=Gary M.|title=Before Brown: Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall, and the Long Road to Justice|date=2010|publisher=University of Texas Press|location=Austin, Texas|isbn=9780292778023|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780292722002|url-access=registration}}

==External links==
* {{wikisource-inline|Sweatt v. Painter|''Sweatt v. Painter''}}
* {{caselaw source
 | case = ''Sweatt v. Painter'', {{ussc|339|629|1950|el=no}}
 | cornell =https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/339/629
 | courtlistener =https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/104804/sweatt-v-painter/
 | googlescholar = https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8240107906648855246
 | justia =https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/339/629/
 | loc =http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep339/usrep339629/usrep339629.pdf
 }}
*[http://www.houseofrussell.com/legalhistory/sweatt/ ''Sweatt v. Painter'' archive]

{{Civil rights movement}}
{{University of Texas at Austin|state=expanded}}
{{US14thAmendment|equalprotection}}

[[Category:United States equal protection case law]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Vinson Court]]
[[Category:1950 in United States case law]]
[[Category:1950 in education]]
[[Category:University of Texas at Austin]]
[[Category:African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement]]
[[Category:Civil rights movement case law]]
[[Category:Education in Texas]]
[[Category:Legal history of Texas]]
[[Category:United States school desegregation case law]]
[[Category:1950 in Texas]]
[[Category:University of Texas School of Law]]
[[Category:Thurgood Marshall]]