However, the Court held that the concepts of equal protection and due process are not mutually exclusive, establishing the reverse incorporation doctrine.

[2][10] On June 22, 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the Revised Statutes of the United States Act passed by the 43rd United States Congress that provided for the revision and consolidation of all federal statutes related to the District of Columbia,[2][11] that retained Section 16 of the Washington County Public Schools Act, retained a separate board of trustees for non-white schools in Georgetown and Washington City, and required the appointment of a separate superintendent for non-white schools.

[14] Howard law professor George E. C. Hayes worked with Nabrit on the oral argument for the Supreme Court hearing.

The Court, led by newly confirmed Chief Justice Earl Warren, decided unanimously in favor of the plaintiffs.

[16] The Court concluded: "racial segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia is a denial of the due process of law guaranteed by the 5th Amendment".

For example, Judge Michael W. McConnell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit wrote that Congress never "required that the schools of the District of Columbia be segregated".

"[18] Conversely, University of Michigan Law School professor Richard Primus has argued that the conventional wisdom among constitutional scholars is that Bolling was not wrongly decided or that the reverse incorporation doctrine is illegitimate, and instead both were "justified by the force of sheer normative necessity.