Interposition Resolution in Response to Brown v. Board of Education, 1957

the case relating to teacher requirements decided on April 9, 1956, to enlarge the language and meaning of the compact by the States in an effort to withdraw from the States powers reserved to them and as daily exercised by them for almost a century;

That a question of contested power has arisen; the Supreme Court of the United States asserts, for its part, that the States did in fact prohibit unto themselves the power to regulate labor matters, criminal proceedings and public education and to maintain racially separate public institutions and the State of Florida, for its part asserts that it and its sister States have never surrendered such rights;

That these assertions upon the part of the Supreme Court of the United States, accompanied by threats of coercion and compulsion against the sovereign States of this Union, constitute a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous attempt by the Court to prohibit to the States certain rights and powers never surrendered by them;

That the Legislature of Florida asserts that whenever the General Government attempts to engage in the deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of powers not granted to it, the States who are parties to the compact have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them;

That failure on the part of this State thus to assert its clear rights would be construed as acquiescence in the surrender thereof; and that such submissive acquiescence to the seizure of one right would in the end lead to the surrender of all rights and, and inevitably to the consolidation of the States into one sovereignty, contrary to the sacred compact by which this Union of States was created;

3