Governor Deval Patrick criticized the US Supreme Court yesterday for considering stepping back from its 1954 decision banning segregation in public schools, a ruling that became a pillar for the civil rights movement.

In two separate appearances yesterday, including Boston's annual breakfast commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. , Patrick said people are anxious to see whether the country would take a "giant lurch back in its long struggle for equal opportunity."

The United States Supreme Court is on the brink of rationalizing justice right out of the law," Patrick, who was sworn in earlier this month as the second black governor in US history , told the hundreds of people gathered at the breakfast at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. "Their pattern seems to be a sort of pious acknowledgement of the existence of discrimination and then condemnation of any effort to do anything about it. I wonder how many of us know that in this term, right now, the Supreme Court is seriously considering overruling the Brown v. Board of Education decision. There's work left to do."