In a 1963 case filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund of Alabama, Grooms ruled that the college's practice of denying black students admission into their university was a violation of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the act of educating black children in schools intentionally separated from white students was charged as unconstitutional.

Judge Grooms also forbid Governor George Wallace from interfering with the students' registration, a warning which he infamously ignored.

[1] He was in the United States Army Reserve from 1926 to 1939, where he served in the 87th Infantry Division and rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant.

Grooms was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 31, 1953, and received his commission on August 3, 1953.

235 (N.D. Ala. 1955), permanently enjoining the Dean of Admissions of the University of Alabama from denying African-American students "the right to enroll therein and pursue courses of study thereat solely on account of their race or color."