Gebhart v. Belton

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Gebhart v. Belton, 33 Del. Ch. 144, 87 A.2d 862 (Del. Ch. 1952), aff'd, 91 A.2d 137 (Del. 1952), was a case decided by the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1952 and affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court in the same year. Gebhart was one of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision of the United States Supreme Court which found unconstitutional racial segregation in United States public schools.

Gebhart is unique among the five Brown cases in that the state trial court ordered that black children be admitted to the state's segregated whites-only schools, and the state Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision. In the remaining Brown cases, all of which were filed in federal rather than state court, federal district courts all found continued segregation constitutional, though some judges questioned its effects on black students, and instead ordered some lesser remedy.