Shelley v. Kraemer
Shelley v. Kraemer | |
---|---|
Holding | |
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from enforcing restrictive covenants that would prohibit a person from owning or occupying property based on race or color. | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinion | |
Majority | Vinson, joined by Black, Frankfurter, Douglas, Murphy, Burton |
Reed, Jackson and Rutledge took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. XIV | |
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings | |
Corrigan v. Buckley (1926) |
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), is a
The case arose after an African-American family purchased a house in St. Louis that was subject to a restrictive covenant preventing "people of the Negro or Mongolian Race" from occupying the property. The purchase was challenged in court by a neighboring resident and was blocked by the Supreme Court of Missouri before going to the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal.
In an opinion joined in by all participating justices, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice
Facts
In 1945, an African-American family by the name of Shelley purchased
The Supreme Court consolidated Shelley v. Kraemer and McGhee v. Sipes cases for oral arguments and considered two questions:
- Are race-based restrictive covenants legal under the United States Constitution?
- Can they be enforced by a court of law?
Legal representation
Solicitor General's brief
The U.S.
Decision
On May 3, 1948, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 6–0 decision[note 1] in favor of the Shelleys. The Supreme Court held "that the [racially] restrictive agreements, standing alone, cannot be regarded as violative of any rights guaranteed to petitioners by the Fourteenth Amendment."[5] Private parties might abide by the terms of such a restrictive covenant, but they might not seek judicial enforcement of such a covenant, as that would be a state action. Because such state action would be discriminatory, the enforcement of a racially based restrictive covenant in a state court would therefore violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The court rejected the argument that since state courts would enforce a restrictive covenant against white people, judicial enforcement of restrictive covenants would not violate the Equal Protection Clause. The court noted that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees individual rights, and that equal protection of the law is not achieved by the imposition of inequalities:
We have no doubt that there has been state action in these cases in the full and complete sense of the phrase. The undisputed facts disclose that petitioners were willing purchasers of properties upon which they desired to establish homes. The owners of the properties were willing sellers, and contracts of sale were accordingly consummated. It is clear that, but for the active intervention of the state courts, supported by the full panoply of state power, petitioners would have been free to occupy the properties in question without restraint. These are not cases, as has been suggested, in which the States have merely abstained from action, leaving private individuals free to impose such discriminations as they see fit. Rather, these are cases in which the States have made available to such individuals the full coercive power of government to deny to petitioners, on the grounds of race or color, the enjoyment of property rights in premises which petitioners are willing and financially able to acquire and which the grantors are willing to sell. The difference between judicial enforcement and nonenforcement of the restrictive covenants is the difference to petitioners between being denied rights of property available to other members of the community and being accorded full enjoyment of those rights on an equal footing.
Application in the District of Columbia
Later legislation
In 1968, Congress enacted the
In popular culture
In 2010, Jeffrey S. Copeland published Olivia's Story: The Conspiracy of Heroes Behind Shelley v. Kraemer,[8] a literary nonfiction account of events leading up to the Shelley v. Kraemer case. In 2017, a documentary film was made titled The Story of Shelley v. Kraemer. The script for the film was written by Copeland, and it was produced by Joe Marchesani and Laney Kraus-Taddeo of the Audio/Video Production Services division of Educational Technology and Media Services at the University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, Iowa).[9] The film has been a featured part of the exhibit titled "#1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis",[10] at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. The film was also nominated for the Sundance Film Festival.
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 334
- Shelley House (St. Louis, Missouri), a National Historic Landmark
- Buchanan v. Warley (1917), a U.S. Supreme Court case which overturned racial zoning ordinances
- Corrigan v. Buckley (1926), a U.S. Supreme Court case which upheld racially restrictive covenants
- Hansberry v. Lee (1940), a U.S. Supreme Court case which allowed renewed challenges to racial covenants
- Civil Rights Act of 1968, of which Titles VIII–IX prohibit discrimination in housing for multiple reasons
- Noble v. Alley, a similar case decided by the Supreme Court of Canadain 1951
References
- Wiley Blount Rutledge recused themselves from the case because they each owned property that was subject to restrictive covenants.[4]
- ^ "Shelley House". We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement. National Park Service. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
- ^ Mitchell, Juanita Jackson (2004). "Meade v. Dennistone: The NAACP's Test Case to '... Sue Jim Crow Out of Maryland with the Fourteenth Amendment'". Maryland Law Review. 63: 807.
- Waxman, Seth. "Twins at Birth: Civil Rights and the Role of the Solicitor General". Indiana Law Journal. 75: 1297, 1306 n. 53.
- SSRN 2553530.
- ^ Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).
- ^ 334 U.S. 24
- ^ "Was your home once off-limits to non-Whites? These maps can tell you". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
- ^ Copeland, Jeffrey S. (2010) Olivia's Story: The Conspiracy of Heroes Behind Shelley v. Kraemer. Paragon House.
- ^ Parker, Melody. "Docu-drama: UNI Prof Makes Film About Landmark Civil Rights Case". Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier. (1 April 2017).
- ^ Russell, Stefene. "At the Missouri History Museum, '#1 in Civil Rights' Corrects the Record". Missouri History Museum Newsletter. (20 July 2017).
Sources
- Darden, Joe T. (1995). "Black Residential Segregation Since the 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer Decision". S2CID 144469057.
- Gilmore, Brian (March 11, 2009). "Not in My Backyard". The Root.
- JSTOR 3310675.
- ISSN 0043-0862.
External links
- Works related to Shelley v. Kraemer at Wikisource
- Text of Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) is available from: CourtListener Justia Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio) WorldLII
- Text of Kraemer v. Shelley, 198 S.W.2d 679 (Mo. 1946) is available from: CourtListener (Reversed Decision)
- "Orsel McGhee House", A Michigan State Historic Site. Detroit: The History and Future of the Motor City website. Accessed 26 March 2014.
- Galloway Jr., Russell W. (1989). "Basic Equal Protection Analysis". Santa Clara Law Review. 29 (1). Retrieved February 8, 2021.