LDF works tirelessly to advance educational equity and ensure that all students have access to a safe, truthful, inclusive, and comprehensive education.
LDF’s victories established the foundations for the civil rights that all Americans enjoy today. In its first two decades, LDF undertook a coordinated legal assault against officially enforced public school segregation. This campaign culminated in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision in 1954 that has been described as “the most important American governmental act of any kind since the Emancipation Proclamation.” The Court’s unanimous decision overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine of legally sanctioned discrimination, widely known as Jim Crow.
On December 9, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court once again reviewed the constitutionality of UT Austin’s undergraduate admissions policy, which considers race among many other factors in order to admit a student body that is both exceptionally academically qualified and broadly diverse.
The Legal Defense Fund has been involved in Fisher from the outset. On behalf of the UT Black Student Alliance, LDF presented oral argument in the court of appeals in support of the University’s admissions policy. In August, 2012 and again in November 2015 LDF filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the Supreme Court.
