Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting
was not, and could not ever be, consistent with the Reconstruction 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 reflect that understanding. In a series of decisions, the Court had held unconstitutional public graduate schools' exclusion 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 between 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 overruled 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
