## Facts

- In 1911, U.S. Senator Augustus O. Bacon devised land to the City of Macon, Georgia, in trust to operate a public park for the exclusive use of white people, with separate parks contemplated for Black residents.
- The park functioned as a public facility under municipal involvement.
- After constitutional limits barred operation of a segregated public park, private trustees sought removal of the city as trustee.
- In prior litigation, the Supreme Court held the park could not be operated on a racially discriminatory basis because it remained a public facility subject to the Fourteenth Amendment.
- On remand, Georgia courts construed the will to make racial segregation an essential condition of the gift, held the trust purpose impossible to accomplish, declined to apply cy pres, terminated the trust, and ordered reversion of the property to the testator’s heirs.
- Black citizens challenged the state-court termination and reversion as violating the Fourteenth Amendment.

## Issues

1. Whether a state court’s termination of a charitable trust for a “whites only” park, and reversion of the property to the settlor’s heirs once segregation became unlawful, constituted unconstitutional state action under the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether applying neutral state will-and-trust construction principles to end the trust denied equal protection to Black citizens seeking nondiscriminatory access to the former park.
3. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment required state courts to preserve the charitable gift through cy pres rather than terminate the trust when the racial condition could not legally be met.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia.
- The Court held that the Georgia courts’ termination of the trust and reversion to the heirs did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Court treated the state-court rulings as ordinary applications of settled Georgia law construing a will and determining that the donor intended termination rather than operation of an integrated park.
- The Court rejected the argument that the trust’s termination was a state-imposed penalty for compliance with constitutional desegregation requirements.
- The Court distinguished cases where courts directly enforce racial exclusions against specific persons; here, the remedy ended the park for everyone rather than enforcing segregated access.

## Legal Principles

- A state court’s neutral application of generally applicable will and trust law to ascertain donor intent does not, without more, constitute unconstitutional state action.
- No Fourteenth Amendment violation occurs where a court, applying nondiscriminatory trust principles, concludes a racially conditioned charitable trust has failed and terminates it, even if the result is loss of the charitable benefit to all.
- Cy pres need not be applied where the donor’s charitable intent is found inseparable from an unlawful racial condition and the donor would prefer termination to an altered, lawful purpose.
- Judicial action that does not confer a racially exclusive benefit, but instead ends the benefit for all, differs from judicial enforcement that directly imposes racial restrictions on use or ownership.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Georgia’s termination of the segregated-park trust and reversion of the property to the testator’s heirs, based on neutral construction of the will and state trust law, did not amount to unconstitutional state action or an equal protection violation, even though it prevented continued operation of the park on an integrated basis.


Evans v. Abney, 396 U.S. 435 (1970)