Important property rights and equal protection case decided
by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948.
In 1911, 30 of the 39 property owners in a St. Louis residential area signed an agreement that prohibited the conveyance of property to anyone not of the Caucasian race,
specifically “people of Negro or Mongolian Race,” for a period of 50 years. At the time the agreement was signed,
African Americans owned 5 of the 57 parcels in the area, and
African Americans had occupied one parcel since 1882. The
Shelleys, who were African Americans, purchased their home
in 1945 without knowledge of the restrictive agreement. The
successors to the original signers brought suit against the
Shelleys. The Shelleys won at the trial level but lost in the
Missouri Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to
hear the matter along with a similar companion case from
Michigan, McGhee v. Sipes.
A basic principle of the American economic and political
system involved private ownership of property. Property
owners retained the right to set the terms, even discriminatory ones, for the sale of their property. However, even
though these restrictive covenants were private agreements,
the owners sought to enforce them in state courts. Under the
Fourteenth Amendment, states cannot “deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” if state
action is involved.
The Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment
protected the owners’ rights to “acquire, enjoy, own and dispose of property” and that the participation of the state in en-
forcing the restrictions was sufficient to bring the amendment into play. In effect, the Court ratified the validity of private discrimination but prevented the use of the state courts
to enforce it under the equal protection clause. Because the
state courts could not enforce the discriminatory residential
agreements, landowners were not bound by them, and so
Shelley v. Kraemer opened American neighborhoods to racial
and religious diversity and served as a precursor to the Fair
Housing Act of 1968.
—Susan Coleman
References
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).