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Public Education is Social Equality

Seven months after the trial concluded, Judge McCormick issued his decision on Feb. 18, 1946. Ruling in favor of the families, he wrote: “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage.”

The school districts appealed the ruling, but on April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the decision, requiring Orange County school districts to integrate their schools. Two months later, on June 14, 1947, California Governor Earl Warren signed legislation outlawing school segregation throughout the state of California. It was the first legislation of its kind in the nation. 

Seven years later, the same Earl Warren, then serving as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, authored the unanimous decision in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing school segregation across the nation.