Is Kimbrough as big as Brown v. Board of Ed?

I am usually the first one to suggest that Supreme Court sentencing decisions are hugely important. (Recall that I have described Blakely as perhaps the biggest SCOTUS criminal justice decision ever.)  But even I have to take pause when seeing a comparison of Kimbough to Brown v. Board of Ed in this new Newsweek article.  Here are excerpts:

For two decades, the United States has pursued, prosecuted and sentenced cocaine offenders in a way that borders on insanity — targeting petty criminals over serious drug dealers — while fostering contempt, instead of respect, for the policies that have sent tens of thousands to jail. On Monday, the Supreme Court said enough was enough and empowered federal judges to reject sentencing guidelines rooted in hysteria and ignorance. The move has considerable support on the federal bench. It allows judges “who actually see the people and understand the local community,” to better consider their communities’ best interests, said Jack B. Weinstein, a federal district judge in New York….

The court’s two 7-2 decisions — authored by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, respectively–contained no rousing rhetoric; they methodically built on the logic of two prior opinions.  But Ginsburg’s ruling catalogued, at length, criticisms of federal cocaine policy. “This may be the first sentencing decision since the mid 1980s that actually talks about justice, that seems to have some blood in it,” said Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU’s drug law reform project. Boyd compared the potential impact of Ginsburg’s decision to the famous Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling.  “When the Supreme Court says that something is wrong, the other institutions of government pay attention,” said Boyd.