<P> This dictum, which established that corporations enjoyed personhood under the Equal Protection Clause, was repeatedly reaffirmed by later courts . It remained the predominant view throughout the twentieth century, though it was challenged in dissents by justices such as Hugo Black and William O. Douglas . Between 1890 and 1910, Fourteenth Amendment cases involving corporations vastly outnumbered those involving the rights of blacks, 288 to 19 . </P> <P> In the decades following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court overturned laws barring blacks from juries (Strauder v. West Virginia, 1880) or discriminating against Chinese Americans in the regulation of laundry businesses (Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 1886), as violations of the Equal Protection Clause . However, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court held that the states could impose segregation so long as they provided similar facilities--the formation of the "separate but equal" doctrine . </P> <P> The Court went even further in restricting the Equal Protection Clause in Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), holding that the states could force private actors to discriminate by prohibiting colleges from having both black and white students . By the early 20th century, the Equal Protection Clause had been eclipsed to the point that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. dismissed it as "the usual last resort of constitutional arguments ." </P> <P> The Court held to the "separate but equal" doctrine for more than fifty years, despite numerous cases in which the Court itself had found that the segregated facilities provided by the states were almost never equal, until Brown v. Board of Education (1954) reached the Court . In Brown the Court ruled that even if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation was inherently harmful to black students and so was unconstitutional . Brown met with a campaign of resistance from white Southerners, and for decades the federal courts attempted to enforce Brown's mandate against repeated attempts at circumvention . This resulted in the controversial desegregation busing decrees handed down by federal courts in various parts of the nation . In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), the Court ruled that race could not be the determinative factor in determining to which public schools parents may transfer their children . </P>

The 14th amendment protects individual rights in public education