## Facts

- Richmond County, Georgia operated a public school system funded by county taxes levied by a local board of education under state law.
- In 1880, the county opened Ware High School for Black students, charging annual tuition.
- In 1887, the board discontinued Ware High School and redirected resources toward elementary schools serving Black students.
- The board continued to fund a public high school for white students.
- Black taxpayers and parents sued the county board of education and the county tax collector, alleging that school taxes would fund high schools limited to white students and sought injunctions against tax collection and expenditures for a white-only high school system.

## Issues

1. Whether using public tax revenues to maintain a high school for white students while providing no comparable public high school for Black students denied equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether federal courts should restrain state and local school authorities’ allocation of educational funds absent a clear constitutional violation.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Georgia Supreme Court’s dismissal of the suit.
- The Court held that, on the record presented, it could not conclude the county’s actions constituted a denial of equal protection or federal privileges under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Court accepted the state courts’ view that the board acted within its statutory discretion and not in bad faith or with hostility toward Black students.
- The Court declined to enjoin tax collection or school expenditures based on the board’s decision to suspend the Black high school for asserted economic reasons while maintaining the white high school.

## Legal Principles

- Public taxation burdens and benefits must not be imposed or distributed with race-based discrimination, but education policy and administration are primarily matters for state and local control.
- Federal judicial intervention in state-managed public schooling is warranted only upon a clear and unmistakable disregard of federal constitutional rights.
- Where state courts find no bad faith and a school board’s funding choices are presented as resource-allocation decisions within delegated authority, the Equal Protection Clause does not automatically require federal injunctive relief.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Richmond County’s discretionary allocation of school resources, concluding that suspending a public high school for Black students for economic reasons while continuing a white high school did not, under the circumstances found by the state courts, amount to a Fourteenth Amendment equal protection violation.


Cumming v. Bd. of Educ. of Richmond Cnty., 175 U.S. 528 (1899)