Facts
- Gong Lum sought to enroll his nine-year-old daughter, Martha Lum, a U.S.-born citizen of Chinese ancestry, in the public school designated for white children in the Rosedale Consolidated High School District in Bolivar County, Mississippi.
- The school superintendent barred her from returning after noon recess pursuant to an order from the district’s trustees excluding her solely because she was of Chinese descent and not considered white.
- The petition alleged the district maintained no school for children of Chinese descent and none existed elsewhere in Bolivar County.
- Lum petitioned for a writ of mandamus to compel the trustees and the state superintendent of education to admit Martha to the white school and stop discrimination.
Issues
- Whether excluding a U.S.-born child of Chinese ancestry from a public school for white children and assigning her to a “colored” school violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Whether a state’s authority to operate racially separate public schools extends to classifying Chinese (Asian) children among nonwhite races for school assignment purposes, assuming equal facilities are provided.
Decision
- The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the state court judgment denying mandamus.
- The Court held that Mississippi did not deny equal protection by classifying a child of Chinese ancestry among the “colored races” and requiring attendance at a separate school for nonwhite children, so long as equal educational facilities were afforded.
- The Court relied on existing precedent approving racial separation in public education and treated the state’s racial classification and school assignment as within state power over public schooling.
Legal Principles
- A state may classify pupils in public schools by race and require racial separation, consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, if educational facilities are equal in legal contemplation.
- Equal protection is not violated merely because a student is excluded from a school reserved for whites due to state racial classification, where the state provides separate schooling for the classified group on equal terms.
- Federal review in this posture accepts a state high court’s construction of state school laws and addresses only whether the resulting classification and separation violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
Conclusion
The Court upheld Mississippi’s authority to exclude a Chinese American child from a public school reserved for white students and to assign her to a separate school for nonwhite students, concluding that such racial classification and separation did not deny equal protection where equal facilities were assumed.