In Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), the Supreme Court ruled that racially restrictive covenants written into property deeds are not themselves unconstitutional, but state courts violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause when they enforce those covenants. Chief Justice Fred Vinson wrote for a unanimous six-justice Court, and the decision established that judicial enforcement of private racial discrimination is itself “state action” subject to constitutional limits.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)
The Family, the Covenant, and the Lawsuit
On February 16, 1911, thirty of the thirty-nine property owners along Labadie Avenue in St. Louis signed an agreement barring any non-white person from owning or occupying property in the area for fifty years. The covenant specifically targeted people of “the Negro or Mongolian Race” and was recorded in local property records, binding current and future owners.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)
On August 11, 1945, J.D. Shelley and Ethel Lee Shelley, an African American couple, bought a home at 4600 Labadie Avenue. They did not know about the 1911 covenant when the sale closed. Louis Kraemer, a white neighbor within the covenant area, sued to void the sale and force the family out of the house on the basis of the racial restriction.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
The trial court in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis refused to enforce the covenant, reasoning that the 1911 agreement had never taken effect because not every property owner had signed it. The Shelleys kept the house. The Supreme Court of Missouri, sitting en banc, reversed and ordered the family to vacate, holding that enforcing the private agreement violated no federal constitutional rights.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The Court’s Reasoning
Vinson’s opinion split the question in two. The first half was straightforward: the covenants themselves, standing alone, do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The Constitution reaches government action, not private conduct. Individuals remain free to enter into discriminatory agreements and to follow them voluntarily. As long as no arm of the state gets involved, private prejudice sits outside constitutional review.
The second half was where the case turned. When the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the Shelleys evicted, the coercive power of the state swung behind the racial restriction. The opinion put it directly: “These are not cases in which the States have merely abstained from action, leaving private individuals free to impose such discriminations as they see fit. Rather, these are cases in which the States have made available to such individuals the full coercive power of government to deny to petitioners, on the grounds of race or color, the enjoyment of property rights.”2Supreme Court of the United States. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)
Without the court order, the covenant was words on paper. The Shelleys had bought the home in a legitimate transaction: a willing seller, a paid price, a delivered deed. Only a court injunction could undo that sale, and issuing that injunction on racial grounds violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Court reversed the Missouri judgment. The Shelleys kept their home.
Why Judicial Enforcement Is State Action
The opinion’s most durable contribution is its definition of state action. Vinson wrote that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to “exertions of state power in all forms,” and that this had been the Court’s consistent position since the amendment was adopted.2Supreme Court of the United States. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) Judges, court clerks, and sheriffs serving eviction papers all act on behalf of the state. When their official acts enforce discrimination, the state is discriminating.
That principle reached well beyond housing. In Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co. (1991), Justice Kennedy relied on Shelley to hold that racially motivated peremptory strikes in civil jury selection are state action, because the discrimination happens inside the courthouse with the court’s participation.
What Shelley Did Not Do
The decision has real limits, and confusion about them is common. Shelley did not outlaw racially restrictive covenants. It did not say every private arrangement touching the courts becomes state action. Courts still enforce contracts with terms some people find objectionable. The line the Court drew was narrower: judicial power cannot be used to deny someone a right the Constitution protects. That reasoning has been extended carefully rather than sweepingly.
Barrows v. Jackson: Closing the Damages Route
Shelley left one obvious question open. If a court could not evict a family for violating a racial covenant, could it instead award money damages against a neighbor who broke one by selling to a non-white buyer? The answer came in Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953).
White neighbors in Los Angeles sued a co-signer of a restrictive covenant for $11,600 in damages after she sold her property to a non-white buyer. The Supreme Court held that a damages award would be state action just as an injunction would. Allowing the suit would punish the seller for refusing to discriminate and effectively coerce her into honoring the racial line. The Court also observed that sellers facing damages liability would either refuse to sell to non-white buyers or charge them more to cover the risk, blocking equal access either way.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953)
Barrows also allowed the white seller to raise the constitutional claims of the non-white buyers who were not parties, finding that her own financial exposure and the weight of the rights at stake justified an exception to the usual rule against asserting third-party rights. Together, the two cases closed both the equitable and legal routes to enforcing racial covenants in court.
The D.C. Companion Case
The Court decided Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24, on the same day. The Hurd family had bought a home on Bryant Street in Washington, D.C., and neighbors sued to enforce a similar covenant. Because D.C. is not a state, the Equal Protection Clause did not directly apply. The Court instead relied on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guarantees all citizens the same property rights regardless of race, and held that federal courts could not enforce the covenant.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24 (1948) Between the two rulings, racially restrictive covenants became judicially unenforceable everywhere in the country.
The Fair Housing Act Finished the Job
Shelley and Barrows stripped these covenants of legal force, but they did not make it illegal to write or follow them. Property owners could still put the language in deeds, and neighbors could still choose to comply. That gap stayed open for two decades until Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which made it unlawful to refuse to sell or rent a home because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin, and banned discriminatory advertising along with it.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S.C. 3604 – Discrimination in the Sale or Rental of Housing
Old covenant language still appears in property records across the country. The text is legally meaningless, and many states have adopted procedures for homeowners to formally strike the language from their deeds.
Why the Case Still Matters
Shelley v. Kraemer did two things that outlasted the housing dispute in front of it. It gave a family its home back. And it gave the Fourteenth Amendment a working definition of state action that still governs when private discrimination crosses into constitutional territory: the moment a court, a clerk, or an officer uses public power to carry it out.