Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 192.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

45 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

was not, and could not ever be, consistent with the Recon-
struction  Amendments,  ratified  to  give  the  former  slaves 
full  citizenship.  Whatever  might  have  been  thought  in 
Plessy’s time, the Brown Court explained, both experience 
and “modern authority” showed the “detrimental effect[s]”
of  state-sanctioned  segregation:  It  “affect[ed]  [children’s]
hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”  347 
U. S., at 494.  By that point, too, the law had begun to re-
flect that understanding.  In a series of decisions, the Court 
had  held  unconstitutional  public  graduate  schools’  exclu-
sion of black students.  See, e.g., Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U. S. 
629 (1950); Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 332 
U. S.  631  (1948)  (per curiam);  Missouri  ex  rel.  Gaines  v. 
Canada,  305  U. S.  337  (1938).  The  logic  of  those  cases, 
Brown held, “appl[ied] with added force to children in grade
and  high  schools.”    347  U. S.,  at  494.    Changed  facts  and
changed law required Plessy’s end. 

The majority says that in recognizing those changes, we
are  implicitly  supporting  the  half-century  interlude  be-
tween Plessy and Brown.  See ante, at 70.  That is not so. 
First, if the Brown Court had used the majority’s method of 
constitutional  construction,  it  might  not  ever  have  over-
ruled  Plessy,  whether  5  or  50  or  500  years  later.    Brown 
thought that whether the ratification-era history supported
desegregation was “[a]t best . . . inconclusive.”  347 U. S., at 
489.  But even setting that aside, we are not saying that a
decision  can  never  be  overruled  just  because  it  is  terribly 
wrong.  Take West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 
624, which the majority also relies on.  See ante, at 40–41, 
70.  That  overruling  took  place  just  three  years  after  the 
initial  decision,  before  any  notable  reliance  interests  had 
developed.  It happened as well because individual Justices
changed their minds, not because a new majority wanted to 
undo the decisions of their predecessors.  Both Barnette and 
Brown, moreover, share another feature setting them apart 
from  the  Court’s  ruling  today.  They  protected  individual