Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell

Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case "hasten[ing] the end of federal court desegregation orders."[1] The Court held that a federal desegregation order should be ended even though it meant that schools would become re-segregated since the Oklahoma schools had been arranged into a unitary system.

Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 2, 1990 Decided January 15, 1991
Full case name	Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools, Independent School District No. 80, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma v. Robert L. Dowell, et al.
Citations	498 U.S. 237 (more) 111 S. Ct. 630; 112 L. Ed. 2d 715; 1991 U.S. LEXIS 484
Case history
Prior	Cert. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Holding
The Court of Appeals' test for dissolving a desegregation decree is more stringent than is required either by this Court's decisions dealing with injunctions or by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices Byron White · Thurgood Marshall Harry Blackmun · John P. Stevens Sandra Day O'Connor · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter
Case opinions
Majority	Rehnquist, joined by White, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy
Dissent	Marshall, joined by Blackmun, Stevens
Souter took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

See also

• National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education: An employment law case for the Oklahoma City schools

References

1. Chemerinsky, Erwin (2005). Constitutional Law. New York: Aspen Publishers. p. 703.

External links

• Text of Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1991) is available from:  Cornell  CourtListener  Google Scholar  Justia  Library of Congress  Oyez (oral argument audio)