Fifty years after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez," the trajectory of school finance desegregation has shifted from expansive federal hopes to narrower state efforts. Attempts to address many of the disparities continue to be constrained by the complex and intersecting nature of the inequalities, rooted in compounding decades of discrimination. This article examines the legal historiography and politics of the "Rodriguez" decision, analyzing the path from "Brown v. Board of Education" to "Rodriguez" in the context of the scholarship around "Rodriguez" over the last fifty years as well as the wide body of work discussing state-based litigation efforts since the 1973 ruling.