Facts
- Property owners in St. Louis, Missouri recorded a covenant restricting residential occupancy for 50 years to persons of the “Caucasian race.”
- In 1945, J.D. and Ethel Shelley, a Black couple, purchased a covered parcel without knowledge of the covenant.
- Neighboring owners sued in Missouri state court to enforce the covenant by divesting the Shelleys of title and possession.
- The Missouri trial court refused enforcement; the Missouri Supreme Court reversed, treating the covenant as a valid private contract outside Fourteenth Amendment limits.
- In Detroit, Michigan, owners relied on a similar covenant barring non-Caucasian occupancy to enjoin a Black family (the McGhees) from occupying their home.
- The Michigan trial court enforced the covenant by injunction; the Michigan Supreme Court affirmed, reasoning the covenant involved only private action.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in both cases and consolidated them.
Issues
- Whether racially restrictive covenants, as private agreements standing alone, violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Whether state-court judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants constitutes state action that violates the Equal Protection Clause.
Decision
- The Court unanimously reversed the Missouri and Michigan judgments.
- Private racially restrictive covenants, without state involvement, are not themselves barred by the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Judicial enforcement of such covenants by state courts is state action attributable to the state.
- By enforcing the covenants through decrees and injunctions requiring Black purchasers to surrender possession or refrain from occupancy based on race, the states denied equal protection.
Legal Principles
- The Fourteenth Amendment restrains state action, not purely private discriminatory conduct.
- Actions of state courts and judicial officers in their official capacities constitute state action for Fourteenth Amendment purposes.
- State judicial enforcement of private racial exclusions in housing violates the Equal Protection Clause.
- Equal protection rights are individual; hypothetical evenhanded enforcement against different racial groups does not cure a denial to the persons subjected to enforcement.
- A state’s refusal to enforce private discriminatory agreements does not deny equal protection to parties seeking enforcement.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court held that while racially restrictive covenants may exist as private promises, state-court enforcement of those covenants is unconstitutional state action that denies equal protection, rendering such covenants judicially unenforceable.