Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.

No. 645. Argued April 1 and 2, 1968. Decided June 17, 1968. Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Judgment reversed (379 Federal 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.

Editorial note. The petitioners, a Negro purchaser and his wife, alleged that the respondents had refused to sell them a home in the Paddock Woods community of St. Louis County solely because of the husband's race. They sought relief under Revised Statutes § 1978, 42 U.S.C. § 1982, which provides that all citizens of the United States shall have the same right as is enjoyed by white citizens to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.

Editorial note. The District Court dismissed the complaint, and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed, holding that the statute applied only to state action. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed. The Fair Housing Act had been enacted while the case was pending, and the Court explained that the new Act did not diminish the reach of the older statute.

Editorial note. Section 1982 applies to a private refusal to sell property on racial grounds, and it is a valid exercise of the power of Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment. The rule derived has two branches. First, as a matter of construction, the statute grants a right to purchase and hold property free of racial discrimination from any source, without a requirement of state involvement. Second, as a matter of constitutional power, Congress may rationally determine that restraints on a citizen's ability to acquire property because of his race are among the badges and incidents of slavery, and may legislate directly against them, whether imposed by the State or by private persons.

Editorial note. Mr. Justice Stewart examined the language and legislative history of the Act of April 9, 1866, and concluded that Congress had meant to secure the enumerated property rights against private as well as official interference; the later re-enactment under the Fourteenth Amendment did not narrow the original grant. On the question of power he relied on the second section of the Thirteenth Amendment, which by its terms is not confined to state action, and reasoned that the Amendment would be a mere paper guarantee if Congress could not reach the practical disabilities that survived emancipation. Mr. Justice Harlan, dissenting, thought the statutory construction unsupported by the history and the case an inappropriate occasion for the decision, given the recently enacted Fair Housing Act.

Editorial note. Jones reopened a nineteenth-century statute that had been assumed for a century to be confined to state action, and in doing so gave American property law a general prohibition of racial discrimination in conveyancing that operates alongside, and independently of, the Fair Housing Act. The two remedies differ in important respects — coverage, exemptions, procedure, and limitation periods — and the treatise treats them in tandem for that reason. The decision also completes the constitutional sequence that begins with Buchanan v. Warley and passes through Shelley v. Kraemer and Barrows v. Jackson: what the Constitution forbade the State to do, and forbade the courts to enforce, Congress may now forbid the private seller to do.

Editorial note. Followed and extended. The Court applied the same reasoning to the companion provision on contracts, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, in Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160 (1976), and treated the construction of § 1982 as settled in Memphis v. Greene, 451 U.S. 100 (1981), while holding on the facts there that the closure of a street did not abridge the statutory property right.

Editorial note. Read with 42 U.S.C. § 1982, the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-3619, and the treatise chapters on fair housing and civil rights and on conveyancing.