Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.

JONES ET UX. v. ALFRED H. MAYER CO. ET AL.

Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

No. 645. Argued April 1–2, 1968 — Decided June 17, 1968.

379 F. 2d 33, reversed.

Opinion of the Court by Mr. Justice Stewart. Mr. Justice Douglas filed a concurring opinion. Mr. Justice Harlan filed a dissenting opinion, in which Mr. Justice White joined.

Samuel H. Liberman argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the brief were Arthur Allen Leff and Samuel A. Chaitovitz. Israel Treiman argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents. Attorney General Clark argued the cause for the United States, as amicus curiae, urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Griswold, Assistant Attorney General Pollak, Louis F. Claiborne, and Brian K. Landsberg.

The report occupies pages 409 through 481 of volume 392 of the United States Reports. The opinion of the Court is printed at pages 412 through 444; the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas at pages 444 through 449; and the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan at pages 449 through 481.

[392 U.S. 409] “Petitioners, alleging that respondents had refused to sell them a home for the sole reason that petitioner Joseph Lee Jones is a Negro, filed a complaint in the District Court, seeking injunctive and other relief. Petitioners relied in part upon 42 U. S. C. § 1982, which provides that all citizens ‘shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.’ The District Court dismissed the complaint and the Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that § 1982 applies only to state action and does not reach private refusals to sell.”

[392 U.S. 409] “Held: 1. Congress' enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, containing in Title VIII detailed housing provisions applicable to a broad range of discriminatory practices and enforceable by a complete arsenal of federal authority, had no effect upon this litigation or upon § 1982, a general statute limited to racial discrimination in the sale and rental of property and enforceable only by private parties acting on their own initiative. Pp. 413-417.”

[392 U.S. 409] “2. Section 1982 applies to all racial discrimination in the sale or rental of property. Pp. 417-437.”

[392 U.S. 410] “3. Congress has power under the Thirteenth Amendment to do what 42 U. S. C. § 1982 purports to do. Pp. 437-444.”

[392 U.S. 410] “(c) Whatever else they may have encompassed, the badges and incidents of slavery that the Thirteenth Amendment empowered Congress to eliminate included restraints upon ‘those fundamental rights which are the essence of civil freedom, namely, the same right . . . to inherit, purchase, lease, sell and convey property, as is enjoyed by white citizens.’ Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 22. Insofar as Hodges v. United States, 203 U. S. 1, suggests a contrary holding, it is overruled. Pp. 441-443.”

[392 U.S. 412] “In this case we are called upon to determine the scope and the constitutionality of an Act of Congress, 42 U. S. C. § 1982, which provides that: ‘All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.’”

[392 U.S. 413] “We hold that § 1982 bars all racial discrimination, private as well as public, in the sale or rental of property, and that the statute, thus construed, is a valid exercise of the power of Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment.”

[392 U.S. 421] “So long as a Negro citizen who wants to buy or rent a home can be turned away simply because he is not white, he cannot be said to enjoy ‘the same right . . . as is enjoyed by white citizens . . . to . . . purchase [and] lease . . . real and personal property.’ 42 U. S. C. § 1982. (Emphasis added.)”

[392 U.S. 421] “On its face, therefore, § 1982 appears to prohibit all discrimination against Negroes in the sale or rental of property — discrimination by private owners as well as discrimination by public authorities.”

[392 U.S. 439] “The constitutional question in this case, therefore, comes to this: Does the authority of Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment ‘by appropriate legislation’ include the power to eliminate all racial barriers to the acquisition of real and personal property? We think the answer to that question is plainly yes.”

[392 U.S. 439] “‘By its own unaided force and effect,’ the Thirteenth Amendment ‘abolished slavery, and established universal freedom.’ Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 20. Whether or not the Amendment itself did any more than that — a question not involved in this case — it is at least clear that the Enabling Clause of that Amendment empowered Congress to do much more. For that clause clothed ‘Congress with power to pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery in the United States.’ Ibid.”

[392 U.S. 443] “At the very least, the freedom that Congress is empowered to secure under the Thirteenth Amendment includes the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. If Congress cannot say that being a free man means at least this much, then the Thirteenth Amendment made a promise the Nation cannot keep.”

[392 U.S. 444] “We agree. The judgment is Reversed.”

[392 U.S. 444] “The Act of April 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27, 42 U. S. C. § 1982, provides: ‘All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.’”

[392 U.S. 444] “Enabling a Negro to buy and sell real and personal property is a removal of one of many badges of slavery.”

Editorial note. Justice Douglas's concurrence surveyed the history of racial discrimination in housing and other spheres from the Black Codes to the present day, arguing that the Thirteenth Amendment, standing alone, was the constitutional warrant for congressional legislation reaching that continuing pattern.

Editorial note. The dissent contended that the case had lost practical importance with the enactment of the Fair Housing Title of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and that the writ ought to have been dismissed as improvidently granted rather than used to construe § 1982 for the first time as a comprehensive prohibition of private discrimination.

Editorial note. On the merits, Justice Harlan read the language and legislative history of the 1866 Act to reach only state-imposed disabilities on the enumerated rights, not the unaided private conduct of sellers, and doubted that the Thirteenth Amendment authorised Congress to reach private refusals to deal as “badges and incidents of slavery.”

Editorial note. This record is a research edition, not a substitute for the official reporter. It reproduces the Reporter of Decisions apparatus in a full syllabus extract and reproduces the Court's own text in extended verbatim passages anchored to the printed pages of United States Reports on which they appear. Passages set without quotation marks are Society prose describing the Court's reasoning; every quotation mark encloses the Court's or the Reporter's words.

Editorial note. The Court-authored sections are SELECTED EXCERPTS. They present the statutory construction at pages 412 through 413, the private-and-public analysis at page 421, the Thirteenth Amendment enforcement analysis at pages 439 and 443, and the disposition at page 444, together with the opening statement of Mr. Justice Douglas's concurrence at page 444. The extensive historical treatment of the 1866 Act at pages 422 through 437 and the legislative-record discussion at pages 437 through 442 are summarised in the editorial apparatus rather than quoted in full.

Editorial note. Three limitations are declared. First, the numbered footnotes of all opinions are not reproduced. Second, the remainder of Mr. Justice Douglas's concurring opinion and the whole of Mr. Justice Harlan's dissenting opinion are described in editorial summary and are not reproduced. Third, obvious typographic and scanning defects in the digitised bound volume (for example the broken renderings of “Trumbull” and “co-operative” and running heads) have been silently corrected against the surrounding text; no substantive word has been altered, modernised, or paraphrased inside a quotation.

Editorial note. For any purpose requiring the complete official text, including the footnotes, the arguments of counsel, and the full concurring and dissenting opinions, consult the bound volume through the canonical source recorded with this authority.

Editorial note. Petitioners, husband and wife, alleged that the respondents had refused to sell them a home in the Paddock Woods community of St. Louis County solely because petitioner Joseph Lee Jones is a Negro. They sought injunctive and other relief, relying in part upon 42 U.S.C. § 1982, which guarantees to all citizens the same right to “inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property” as is enjoyed by white citizens.

Editorial note. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri dismissed the complaint, 255 F. Supp. 115. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed, 379 F. 2d 33, concluding that § 1982 reached only state action. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari and reversed.

Editorial note. Section 1982 bars all racial discrimination, private as well as public, in the sale or rental of real and personal property. So construed, the statute is a valid exercise of the power of Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment; the recently enacted Fair Housing Title of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 does not narrow or displace it.

Editorial note. Justice Stewart traced § 1982 to § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, whose language, structure, and legislative history the Court read as a comprehensive congressional decision to secure the enumerated rights against interference from any source, whether governmental or private. The re-enactment of the statute in 1870, following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, did not narrow its original reach; long periods of judicial disuse likewise did not.

Editorial note. On the constitutional question, the Court held the Thirteenth Amendment self-executing as to slavery itself, but read its Enabling Clause as granting Congress power to identify and abolish the badges and incidents of slavery, including the denial to Negroes of the right to buy and hold property on equal terms. Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1, was overruled to the extent of its inconsistency with that principle.

Editorial note. Jones is the modern foundation of federal statutory law against private racial discrimination in the property market and, more broadly, of the doctrine that Congress may under the Thirteenth Amendment reach conduct without any showing of state action. It supplies a statutory ground for what Shelley and Barrows had secured only against judicial enforcement, and it reads the 1866 Civil Rights Act as continuing to operate in tandem with the modern Fair Housing Act.

Editorial note. Followed and elaborated. Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160 (1976), extended the reasoning to 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and private contracts of education; Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, Inc., 396 U.S. 229 (1969), extended § 1982 to leases and to conveyances of membership interests. Modern statutory fair-housing liability, addressed under the Fair Housing Act, appears in Texas Dept. of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519 (2015).

Editorial note. Read with 42 U.S.C. § 1982 (statute construed), Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), and Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917).