Greene v. Lindsey: Posted Eviction Notices and Due Process

In Greene v. Lindsey, 456 U.S. 444 (1982), the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that Kentucky violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when it notified public housing tenants of eviction lawsuits by taping the summons to their apartment doors. Justice Brennan’s majority opinion found that in the crowded Jefferson County housing projects where the notices were posted, the papers were removed so often that tenants routinely lost their homes to default judgments without ever knowing they had been sued. The state had to do more, and the Court pointed to a cheap and obvious fix: mail a copy.¹

What Happened to the Tenants

The plaintiffs lived in public housing in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The local housing authority filed forcible entry and detainer actions to evict them. Process servers went to each apartment, and when no one answered the door, they did what the statute allowed as a fallback: they tacked or taped the summons to the door and left.¹

The tenants said they never saw those papers. They found out about the lawsuits only after default judgments had been entered, writs of possession executed, and the time to appeal already gone. They had lost their homes and their day in court in one stroke.²

Testimony in the case confirmed what the tenants described. Notices posted on apartment doors in these projects were, in the record’s phrase, “not infrequently” removed before the tenants could read them. Crowded hallways, unsupervised common areas, and heavy foot traffic meant a piece of paper stuck to a door was far less reliable there than it might be on a house set back from a quiet street.²

What Kentucky’s Statute Required

The law challenged in the case was Kentucky Revised Statutes § 454.030. It set out three steps in order. The officer had to try to hand the summons to the tenant in person at the premises. If the tenant could not be found, the officer could leave a copy with any family member on the premises who was at least 16 years old. Only if both of those failed could the officer post a copy “in a conspicuous place on the premises.”¹

On paper, posting was a last resort. In practice, a single visit to an empty apartment could end with the summons taped up and no further attempt at contact. The statute required no follow-up mailing and no second try in person.

The Due Process Test the Court Used

The governing standard came from Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306 (1950). Notice, the Court had said there, must be “reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections.” The method chosen should be one that “a person desirous of actually informing the absentee might reasonably adopt.”³

That standard does not require perfection. It does not guarantee that every person will actually receive notice. It requires that the state pick a method reasonably likely to work.

Why the Majority Struck Down Posting

Justice Brennan, joined by Justices White, Marshall, Blackmun, Powell, and Stevens, applied the Mullane test and found Kentucky’s method constitutionally deficient. The reasoning rested on one central fact: the state knew the method was failing. Process servers and the housing authority were aware that notices posted on these doors regularly disappeared. A government that knows its chosen notification method frequently fails cannot keep relying on it as the only way to reach the people it is suing.¹

The Court was careful about the reach of its ruling. Posting a summons on a door is not always unconstitutional. On a single-family home with a private porch, posted notice may satisfy due process. What matters is the setting. In a crowded housing project where papers routinely vanished, posting alone was not enough.²

The majority also identified a simple remedy. Sending the summons through the U.S. Postal Service, the Court wrote, “would go a long way toward providing the constitutionally required assurance” that tenants would actually learn about the proceedings. The Court did not require any specific method, but it stated that “posted service accompanied by mail service is constitutionally preferable to posted service alone.”²

The Dissent

Justice O’Connor, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist, dissented. She argued that the tiered Kentucky statute was reasonable on its face: personal service first, then a family member, then posting only as a last resort. In her view, the majority had overturned the statute on a “wholly inadequate record.”¹

She challenged the factual premise that notices were routinely removed, calling the testimony on that point “scant and conflicting.” One process server had reported seeing children pull down writs, but others said they had never seen that happen and avoided the problem by placing notices high on the door, out of reach. O’Connor also questioned whether mail was really more reliable, noting that unattended mailboxes are themselves “subject to plunder by thieves.” Posting, at least, gets the paper to the tenant’s own door.

The dissent also warned about the nature of the underlying proceeding. Forcible entry and detainer actions are designed to be fast, giving landlords a quick way to recover property from tenants who have stopped paying rent. Requiring additional service methods, O’Connor argued, would slow down a process the legislature had made summary on purpose.

What the Ruling Changed

The most practical consequence of Greene v. Lindsey was the spread of “nail and mail” service. When a process server posts documents on a door, many jurisdictions now require that a copy also go out by regular or certified mail. One method might fail, but the odds of both failing at once drop sharply. That belt-and-suspenders approach is a direct response to the problem the Court identified.

The Supreme Court returned to the same principle in Jones v. Flowers, 547 U.S. 220 (2006). Arkansas had tried to notify a homeowner of a tax sale by certified mail. Both letters came back unclaimed, because the owner had separated from his wife and moved elsewhere in the same city. The state sold the house without taking any further steps to reach him.⁴

The Court held that when mailed notice comes back unclaimed, the government must take additional reasonable steps before selling the property, if doing so is practicable. The opinion cited Greene for the principle that a government aware its notice is failing cannot just proceed. Jones extended Greene‘s logic from a method that was inherently unreliable in a particular setting to a method that was normally fine but had demonstrably failed in a specific case.⁴

If You Were Never Notified of a Case Against You

Greene is the kind of decision that matters most to people who find out too late. When a defendant never receives notice of a lawsuit, they do not appear, and the plaintiff wins by default. A default judgment entered without proper service is generally considered void, meaning the court never had authority over the defendant in the first place. A void judgment can be challenged at any time, with no filing deadline, because it was never legally valid.

Even where the service defect is not severe enough to void the judgment outright, most court systems allow a defendant to file a motion to vacate a default. The defendant typically has to show a legitimate defense on the merits, a reasonable excuse for not responding, and prompt action once the judgment came to light. Courts weigh those factors against any prejudice the plaintiff would face if the case were reopened.

The Core Principle

Greene v. Lindsey stands for a straightforward idea: the government cannot take away your home through a legal proceeding you never knew about. The method the state uses to notify you must be one that a reasonable person who genuinely wanted to reach you would choose. When the state knows a method is failing, whether because notices vanish from doors in a housing project or certified letters come back unclaimed, it has to do more. The Constitution does not guarantee that every person will actually receive notice, but it does guarantee that the state will make a real effort to deliver it.²

1
United States Reports. 456 U.S. 444 – Greene v. Lindsey
2
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Greene v. Lindsey, 456 U.S. 444 (1982)
3
Legal Information Institute. Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank and Trust Co.
4
United States Reports. 547 U.S. 220 – Jones v. Flowers