Civil rights groups accuse conservatives of recasting landmark Brown v. Board ruling on 70th anniversary

Seventy years after the Supreme Court acknowledged that “separate but equal” had no place in the United States, one of history’s most celebrated legal opinions is being used by conservative groups to challenge race-related policies in schools across the country.

Seventy years after the Supreme Court acknowledged that “separate but equal” had no place in the United States, one of history’s most celebrated legal opinions is being used by conservative groups to challenge race-related policies in schools across the country. In a remarkable demonstration of the Supreme Court’s power to shape American life, the 1954 unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education required the integration of public schools – a landmark victory for the civil rights movement. The high court handed down its decision 70 years ago Friday. Speaking in Texas last week, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh described the decision as one of several that are now part of the “fabric of America.” But a conflict over the decision’s meaning is playing out in a series of lawsuits challenging efforts to foster classroom diversity, in which conservative groups are arguing that Brown requires schools and government programs to be totally colorblind. Civil rights groups say that recasts a decision that was intended to rectify the nation’s history with racism. “Brown is being weaponized against the very people it was intended to directly serve,” Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told CNN. “And that is largely a result of the Supreme Court never giving the 14th Amendment the full and robust interpretation that is required to sustain a multiracial democracy.”