Takeaway
In short, this case holds that private racial covenants may exist as private agreements, but state courts may not enforce them because judicial enforcement is state action that violates the Equal Protection Clause.
In Missouri, most—but not all—owners of lots on a block of Labadie Avenue in St. Louis had signed and recorded a 1911 covenant barring occupancy by persons who were not Caucasian, specifically including Black and Asian persons. In 1945, J.D. and Ethel Shelley, who were Black, purchased a covered parcel from a willing seller without actual knowledge of the covenant. Neighboring owners sued to prevent the Shelleys from taking possession and to divest their title. The trial court denied relief because it found the agreement had never become effective, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed and ordered enforcement.
In Michigan, a recorded 1934 agreement restricted a Detroit property to Caucasian occupancy after similar restrictions covered at least 80 percent of the lots on the block. The Black petitioners purchased and occupied the house in 1944. Neighboring owners obtained a decree ordering them to leave and barring future occupancy; the Michigan Supreme Court affirmed.
The petitioners argued that state-court enforcement of these racially restrictive covenants denied them equal protection, due process, and the privileges or immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Issue #1
Whether racially restrictive covenants, considered solely as private agreements, violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
Holding
No. Private restrictive covenants standing alone are not state action and therefore do not, by themselves, violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
Reasoning
The Fourteenth Amendment restrains action fairly attributable to a State; it does not itself prohibit merely private discrimination, however objectionable. Thus, property owners could voluntarily comply with a discriminatory covenant without triggering the Amendment.
Corrigan v. Buckley did not resolve the issue presented here. That case concerned the validity of a private covenant and arose from the District of Columbia, so it did not adjudicate whether a state court's enforcement of such a covenant violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Court distinguished private creation of a discriminatory agreement from government enforcement of it. The constitutional question was not whether private parties could write the covenants, but whether state courts could use governmental power to make them effective.
Issue #2
Whether a state court's enforcement of a private racially restrictive covenant constitutes state action under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Holding
Yes. Judicial enforcement of the covenants is state action because state courts exercise the State's coercive authority when they enforce them.
Reasoning
A State acts through its judicial branch as well as through its legislature and executive. Longstanding precedent recognizes that official acts of state judges and state courts are state action for Fourteenth Amendment purposes.
The fact that the discriminatory classification originated in a private agreement did not make the State's role insignificant. Once the courts granted injunctions, eviction orders, or title-divesting relief, they placed the State's full coercive power behind a racial exclusion.
Without the state-court decrees, the willing sellers could have conveyed the properties and the Black purchasers could have occupied them. Judicial enforcement therefore made the practical difference between the petitioners' enjoying ordinary property rights and being denied those rights because of race.
Issue #3
Whether state-court enforcement of covenants excluding persons from property ownership or occupancy because of race denies equal protection of the laws.
Holding
Yes. Enforcing the covenants denied the petitioners equal protection because the State used its power to deprive them of property rights on the basis of race.
Reasoning
The Fourteenth Amendment protects the right to acquire, hold, use, and dispose of property without state-imposed racial discrimination. The Court had already held that a State could not directly impose residential racial segregation through statutes or ordinances; it could not achieve the same unconstitutional result through judicial decrees enforcing private covenants.
The covenants did not regulate a neutral use of land. They singled out a class of persons defined wholly by race and barred that class from owning or occupying homes that they were willing and able to purchase from willing sellers.
The respondents' assertion that courts would also enforce covenants excluding white persons did not cure the violation. Equal-protection rights belong to individuals, and equal protection is not achieved by imposing comparable racial disabilities on everyone.
Nor did the covenanting property owners have a constitutional entitlement to state assistance in discriminating against others. A State's power to recognize and enforce property interests must be exercised within the Fourteenth Amendment's limits.
Because equal protection independently required reversal, the Court did not decide the petitioners' separate due-process and privileges-or-immunities claims.