The landmark Supreme Court case that ruled racial segregation in schools unconstitutional was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The case originated from a lawsuit filed by the parents of Linda Brown, a young African American girl who was denied admission to an all-white school in Topeka, Kansas. The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in 1954 declared that separate educational facilities for different races were inherently unequal and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This ruling overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and became a crucial step in the Civil Rights Movement, challenging racial segregation in various aspects of American society.