This episode looks at Sweatt v. Painter (1950) a desegregation case decided four years before Brown v. Board of Education. Here, the court looked at whether the University of Texas Law School's segregation policy denied Sweatt Equal Protection of the law under the 14th Amendment because it failed to provide an alternative law school for blacks that was qualitatively equal to UT's law school. This case was an important to step towards the elimination of the separate but equal doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson.