Shelley v. Kraemer

Shelley v. Kraemer
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 14, 1948 Decided May 3, 1948
Full case name	Shelley et ux. v. Kraemer et ux. McGhee et ux. v. Sipes et al.
Citations	334 U.S. 1 (more) 68 S. Ct. 836; 92 L. Ed. 1161; 3 A.L.R.2d 441
Case history
Prior	Judgment for defendants; reversed, 198 S.W.2d 679 (Mo. 1947); certiorari granted. Judgment for plaintiffs; affirmed 25 N.W.2d 638 (Mich. 614); certiorari granted.
Holding
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from enforcing restrictive covenants that would prohibit a person from owning or occupying property based on race or color.
Court membership
Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Frank Murphy · Robert H. Jackson Wiley B. Rutledge · Harold H. Burton
Case opinion
Majority	Vinson, joined by Black, Frankfurter, Douglas, Murphy, Burton
Reed, Jackson and Rutledge took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings
Corrigan v. Buckley (1926)

Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), is a landmark^[1] United States Supreme Court case that held that racially restrictive housing covenants cannot legally be enforced.

The case arose after an African-American family purchased a house in St. Louis that was subject to a restrictive covenant preventing "people of the Negro or Mongolian Race" from occupying the property. The purchase was challenged in court by a neighboring resident and was blocked by the Supreme Court of Missouri before going to the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal.

In an opinion joined in by all participating justices, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibits racially restrictive housing covenants from being enforced. Vinson held that while private parties could abide by the terms of a racially restrictive covenant, judicial enforcement of the covenant by a court qualified as a state action and was thus prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause.