As the Supreme Court heard arguments in a racially charged Louisiana voting rights case last month, down on its ground floor a special exhibit was running a continual loop of commentary from Chief Justice John Roberts and others extolling the desegregation ruling of Brown v. Board of Education.

The exhibit takes advantage of the restored bench used by US district court Judge Ronald Davies, who ordered the enrollment of nine Black students at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Three years after the Brown ruling, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus was still fighting school integration.

The Supreme Court’s Cooper v. Aaron decision, arising from that Arkansas standoff, declared the state bound by Brown and reinforced the mandate of desegregation.

The tone of the justices’ commentary in a video is lofty, such as from Justice Brett Kavanaugh: “Brown v. Board of Education is the single greatest moment, single greatest decision, in this court’s history. And the reason for that is that it enforced a constitutional principle, ‘equal protection of the laws,’ ‘equal justice under law,’ and made that real for all Americans.”

Yet the concept of “equal protection of the laws” has shrunk with the modern Supreme Court. That has been evident in the justices’ rulings on race-based measures in education. And during oral arguments in the Louisiana case, Kavanaugh was among the justices who suggested the era of racial remedies, in education and voting, must end.

As race endures as a flashpoint for the justices, the court has weakened the spirit and reach of Brown. A series of impending cases may further erode civil rights milestones.

“Brown is a shell now,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the organization that took the le