Supreme Court Rules Restrictive Racial Covenants in Housing Not Enforceable
A traditional form of housing discrimination was to include restrictive covenants in home sale agreements that barred resale of the property to members of certain groups. The practice was widely used against African-Americans and Jews.
In Shelley v. Kraemer, decided on this day, the Supreme Court ruled that while a private real estate transaction was not a state action under the Fourteenth Amendment, judicial enforcement of the agreement was state action, and therefore the covenants could not be enforced. (See the first steps in the case, October 9, 1945.)
The national office of the ACLU, on the advice of the NAACP, decided to wait for a stronger housing case. The ACLU of Missouri, however, went ahead and filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Shelleys. See the work of the Missouri ACLU in the 1940s here.
Congress finally passed a federal Fair Housing law on April 11, 1968, just a week after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, on April 4, 1968. The Supreme Court affirmed and strengthened the 1968 Fair Housing Act in a crucial decision on June 25, 2015.
The Covenant: “This property shall not be used or occupied by any person or persons except those of the Caucasian race.”
The Court: “The short of the matter is that from the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment until the present, it has been the consistent ruling of this Court that the action of the States to which the Amendment has reference, includes action of state courts and state judicial officials.”
Learn more: John Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination (1995)
Read the interview with J. D. Shelley in: Peter Irons, ed., The Courage of Their Convictions (1988); Chapter 3, pp. 63-79.
Learn more about the history of restrictive housing covenants: http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrictive-Covenants.html
Learn about housing discrimination at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights:
http://www.civilrights.org/fairhousing/laws/housing-discrimination.html