 Risa Goluboff wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Courts that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk.The Court ruled that both "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and "Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education" (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, were unconstitutional.The federal government filed a friend of the court brief in the case urging the justices to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the Cold War.