Shelley v. Kraemer

SHELLEY ET UX. v. KRAEMER ET UX.

No. 72. Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Missouri. Together with No. 87, McGhee et ux. v. Sipes et al., on certiorari to the Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued January 15–16, 1948 — Decided May 3, 1948.

“355 Mo. 814, 198 S. W. 2d 679, and 316 Mich. 614, 25 N. W. 2d 638, reversed.” Reversed, p. 23.

Opinion of the Court by Mr. Chief Justice Vinson. Mr. Justice Reed, Mr. Justice Jackson, and Mr. Justice Rutledge took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.

Counsel of record, as published: “George L. Vaughn and Herman Willer argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioners in No. 72. Earl Susman was also of counsel. Thurgood Marshall and Loren Miller argued the cause for petitioners in No. 87” — with them on the brief were Willis M. Graves, Francis Dent, William H. Hastie, Charles H. Houston, George M. Johnson, William R. Ming, Jr., James Nabrit, Jr., Marian Wynn Perry, Spottswood W. Robinson, III, Andrew Weinberger, and Ruth Weyand. “By special leave of Court, Solicitor General Perlman argued the cause for the United States, as amicus curiae, supporting petitioners.” Gerald L. Seegers argued the cause for respondents in No. 72; Henry Gilligan and James A. Crooks for respondents in No. 87.

The opinion of the Court occupies pages 4 through 23 of volume 334 of the United States Reports.

[334 U.S. 1] “Private agreements to exclude persons of designated race or color from the use or occupancy of real estate for residential purposes do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment; but it is violative of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment for state courts to enforce them. Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U. S. 323, distinguished. Pp. 8-23.”

“(a) Such private agreements standing alone do not violate any rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 12-13.”

“(b) The actions of state courts and judicial officers in their official capacities are actions of the states within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 14-18.”

“(c) In granting judicial enforcement of such private agreements in these cases, the states acted to deny petitioners the equal protection of the laws, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 18-23.”

“(d) The fact that state courts stand ready to enforce restrictive covenants excluding white persons from the ownership or occupancy of property covered by them does not prevent the enforcement of covenants excluding colored persons from constituting a denial of equal protection of the laws, since the rights created by § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment are guaranteed to the individual. Pp. 21-22.”

[334 U.S. 2] “(e) Denial of access to the courts to enforce such restrictive covenants does not deny equal protection of the laws to the parties to such agreements. P. 22.”

[334 U.S. 2] The Reporter's statement of the proceedings below: in No. 72 the Supreme Court of Missouri reversed a state trial court's refusal to enforce the covenant, 355 Mo. 814, 198 S. W. 2d 679; in No. 87 the Supreme Court of Michigan affirmed an injunction against violation of the covenant, 316 Mich. 614, 25 N. W. 2d 638. Certiorari was granted in both cases, 331 U. S. 803, 804.

[334 U.S. 4] The Court first set out the terms of the St. Louis and Detroit agreements, the conveyances to the petitioners, and the decisions of the Supreme Courts of Missouri and Michigan enforcing the covenants, and reviewed Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U. S. 323, as a case arising in the District of Columbia in which no Fourteenth Amendment question was presented.

[334 U.S. 13] “Here the particular patterns of discrimination and the areas in which the restrictions are to operate, are determined, in the first instance, by the terms of agreements among private individuals. Participation of the State consists in the enforcement of the restrictions so defined. The crucial issue with which we are here confronted is whether this distinction removes these cases from the operation of the prohibitory provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

[334 U.S. 13] “Since the decision of this Court in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3 (1883), the principle has become firmly embedded in our constitutional law that the action inhibited by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment is only such action as may fairly be said to be that of the States. That Amendment erects no shield against merely private conduct, however discriminatory or wrongful.”

[334 U.S. 13] “We conclude, therefore, that the restrictive agreements standing alone cannot be regarded as violative of any rights guaranteed to petitioners by the Fourteenth Amendment. So long as the purposes of those agreements are effectuated by voluntary adherence to their terms, it would appear clear that there has been no action by the State and the provisions of the Amendment have not been violated. Cf. Corrigan v. Buckley, supra.”

[334 U.S. 13] “But here there was more. These are cases in which the purposes of the agreements were secured only by judicial enforcement by state courts of the restrictive [334 U.S. 14] terms of the agreements.”

[334 U.S. 14] “That the action of state courts and judicial officers in their official capacities is to be regarded as action of the State within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, is a proposition which has long been established by decisions of this Court. That principle was given expression in the earliest cases involving the construction of the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

[334 U.S. 14] Quoting Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 318 (1880): “It is doubtless true that a State may act through different agencies, — either by its legislative, its executive, or its judicial authorities; and the prohibitions of the amendment extend to all action of the State denying equal protection of the laws, whether it be action by one of these agencies or by another.” And Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 347 (1880): “A State acts by its legislative, its executive, or its judicial authorities. It can act in no other way.”

[334 U.S. 14] “In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 11, 17 (1883), this Court pointed out that the Amendment makes void ‘State action of every kind’ which is inconsistent with the guaranties therein contained, and extends to manifestations of ‘State authority in the shape of laws, customs, or judicial or executive proceedings.’”

[334 U.S. 19] “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.”

[334 U.S. 19] “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.”

[334 U.S. 20] “Nor is the Amendment ineffective simply because the particular pattern of discrimination, which the State has enforced, was defined initially by the terms of a private agreement. State action, as that phrase is understood for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, refers to exertions of state power in all forms. And when the effect of that action is to deny rights subject to the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is the obligation of this Court to enforce the constitutional commands.”

[334 U.S. 20] “We hold that in granting judicial enforcement of the restrictive agreements in these cases, the States have denied petitioners the equal protection of the laws and that, therefore, the action of the state courts cannot stand.”

[334 U.S. 22] “The rights created by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment are, by its terms, guaranteed to the individual. The rights established are personal rights. It is, therefore, no answer to these petitioners to say that the courts may also be induced to deny white persons rights of ownership and occupancy on grounds of race or color. Equal protection of the laws is not achieved through indiscriminate imposition of inequalities.”

Editorial note. This edition reproduces the Reporter of Decisions apparatus at 334 U.S. 1–3 and extended verbatim passages of the opinion of the Court from 334 U.S. 4–23, arranged under the Court's own numbered divisions and marked with the official page on which each passage begins.

Editorial limitations, declared under Authority Library § 09.4: (1) the numbered footnotes of the opinion are not reproduced; (2) the reproduction is selective — the Court's recital of the agreements and of the proceedings below (334 U.S. 4–12) and its survey of the Fourteenth Amendment authorities (334 U.S. 15–18) are summarised in Society prose outside quotation marks; (3) the extensive listing of amici curiae at 334 U.S. 3–4 is not reproduced in full; and (4) obvious scanning defects in the digitised volume have been corrected against the surrounding text.

Editorial note. Metadata verified against the bound volume: the docket numbers (Nos. 72 and 87), the companion case McGhee v. Sipes, the argument dates, the reporter citations of both judgments below, the grants of certiorari at 331 U. S. 803 and 804, and the non-participation of Justices Reed, Jackson, and Rutledge were absent or incomplete in the prior record and are now recorded.

Editorial note. Owners of parcels in St. Louis and Detroit had executed agreements restricting occupancy to persons of the Caucasian race. Black purchasers acquired affected parcels, and neighboring owners sued in state court to divest title and to enjoin occupancy. The Missouri and Michigan courts of last resort enforced the covenants.

Editorial note. In No. 72 the Missouri trial court refused enforcement for want of the requisite signatures; the Supreme Court of Missouri reversed and directed enforcement. In No. 87 the Michigan trial court enjoined the violation and the Supreme Court of Michigan affirmed. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in both cases and reversed both judgments.

Editorial note. The private execution of a racially restrictive covenant does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, but its enforcement by the judicial officers of a State does. State courts may not lend their coercive authority to deny a purchaser the enjoyment of property on the ground of race or color.

Editorial note. The Court reaffirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment reaches only state action, then held that action of state courts is action of the State. But for the intervention of the state courts, the purchasers would have taken and occupied without restraint; the injunction supplied the coercion that private agreement alone could not. Equal protection therefore forbids the enforcement, and the availability of the state's own tribunals cannot be conditioned on the race of the litigant.

Editorial note. Shelley destroyed the legal utility of the racial covenant as a servitude while leaving the covenant itself formally intact, and it stands as the broadest reading of judicial conduct as state action. In property terms, it establishes that a restriction otherwise valid in form is unenforceable where enforcement would make the State the instrument of racial exclusion.

Editorial note. Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953), extended the rule to damages actions between covenantors. Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968), sustained 42 U.S.C. § 1982 as reaching private racial discrimination in the sale of property, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 supplied a comprehensive statutory prohibition that no longer depends on the presence of state action.

Editorial note. Read with U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 (equal protection; state action) and with the Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes § 3.1 (validity of servitudes; illegality and public policy).