Gong+Lum+v.+Rice

=Gong Lum v. Rice= 275 U.S. 78 (1927)

Martha Lum, the child of the plaintiff, was a citizen of the United States and a child of immigrants from China. She enrolled in and attended the local public consolidated high school at the age of 9, but was told midway through her first day that she could not return to school. She could not attend the school under Mississippi statute because she was not white.

There was not a school for African Americans located within the high school district where Lum lived, but she had the opportunity to attend a school for blacks within the county.

"The question here is whether a Chinese citizen of the United States is denied equal protection of the laws when he is classed among the colored races and furnished facilities for education equal to that offered to all, whether white, brown, yellow, or black. Were this a new question, it would call for very full argument and consideration, but we think that it is the same question which has been many times decided to be within the constitutional power of the state Legislature to settle, without intervention of the federal courts under the federal Constitution."

The Court aligned this case under the language of //Plessy v. Ferguson//, which it said involved the "more difficult question" of segregation on railway carriers. In //Plessy//, the Court had listed many cases from state courts, upholding the practice of segregating schools.

Notably absent from the opinion, as it was in //Plessy//, is any citation to a Supreme Court case that considered whether the practice of segregating schools was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was an open question for the Court. However, //Gong Lum// merely extended //Plessy// to school segregation based on its dicta and did not explore the question more thoroughly.

The Court admitted that the precedent to which it cited involved discrimination between whites and blacks rather than other races. However, the Court found no appreciable difference here— "[t]he decision is within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools, and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment."

Technically, the Court did not here decide that segregation between whites and blacks was permissible, but the Court did not hesitate in ratifying school segregation as a whole.