## Facts

- Louisville, Kentucky enacted a residential segregation ordinance barring Black persons from owning or occupying homes on blocks where whites were the majority, and barring whites on majority-Black blocks.
- Charles H. Buchanan, a white property owner, agreed to sell a lot in a predominantly white block to William Warley, a Black purchaser.
- The purchase agreement made closing conditional on Warley’s legal right to occupy the property as a residence under Kentucky and Louisville law.
- Warley refused to complete the purchase, asserting the ordinance prevented him from lawfully occupying the property.
- Buchanan sued Warley for specific performance, contending the ordinance was unconstitutional because it impaired the ability to sell to a qualified purchaser.
- Kentucky’s highest court upheld the ordinance, and Buchanan sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether a municipal ordinance that restricts residential occupancy and acquisition based solely on race violates the Fourteenth Amendment by depriving persons of property without due process of law.
2. Whether a white property owner has standing to challenge a race-based ordinance that prevents sale of property to a Black purchaser.
3. Whether asserted police-power justifications (public peace, avoidance of racial conflict, preservation of property values) can support race-based restrictions that substantially impair the rights to acquire, use, and dispose of property.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the state court and held the ordinance unconstitutional.
- The Court held Buchanan had standing because the ordinance deprived him of an essential element of property: the right to dispose of it to an otherwise qualified purchaser.
- The Court concluded the ordinance exceeded legitimate police power by destroying, rather than merely regulating, the rights to acquire, enjoy, use, and convey property.
- The Court rejected the argument that facially reciprocal restrictions on both races cured the constitutional defect where the operative criterion was race.

## Legal Principles

- The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause protects substantive property rights, including the right to sell and convey property to a legally qualified purchaser.
- A race-based residential zoning ordinance that, in practical effect, blocks sales and occupancy because of race deprives persons of property without due process of law.
- The police power cannot justify measures that make race the sole basis for denying civil property rights, even if the government asserts public peace or property-value rationales.
- Formal “equal” application to both races does not remove unconstitutional discrimination where the law’s prohibition rests on color alone.
- Federal civil-rights guarantees protecting the rights to purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey property reinforce constitutional limits on race-based restraints on property transactions.

## Conclusion

The Court invalidated Louisville’s racial zoning ordinance because it imposed a race-based bar on acquiring and occupying residential property that unconstitutionally impaired core property and contract rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and a white seller could challenge the ordinance when it obstructed sale to a qualified Black buyer.


Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917)