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.
