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A landmark case in which the Supreme Court determined that the enforcement of racially discriminatory restrictive covenants would violate the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore be unconstitutional. Since restrictive covenants themselves are private agreements between homebuyers, the Court decided, they are not necessarily unconstitutional in themselves—but enforcing them would be unconstitutional, since it would mean enlisting the government to guarantee racial discrimination. However, after this decision, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) continued to promote these restrictive covenants, to the point of making them a requirement for receiving mortgage insurance. This continued even after the federal government directly told the FHA to stop, which illustrates the limits of court decisions’ capacity to actually control policy and executive branch action.
Shelley v. Kraemer Quotes in The Color of Law
The The Color of Law quotes below are all either spoken by Shelley v. Kraemer or refer to Shelley v. Kraemer. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5
Quotes
The Supreme Court decision in Shelley v. Kraemer, banning court enforcement of restrictive covenants, had been unanimous, 6-0. Three of the nine justices excused themselves from participating because their objectivity might have been challenged—there were racial restrictions covering the homes in which they lived.
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Shelley v. Kraemer Term Timeline in The Color of Law
The timeline below shows where the term Shelley v. Kraemer appears in The Color of Law. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: Private Agreements, Government Enforcement
...Rothstein explains that the Supreme Court finally declared restrictive covenants unconstitutional in the 1948 case Shelley v. Kraemer , because enforcing them required government involvement and therefore violates the Fourteenth Amendment. But the...
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Ultimately, little changed after Shelley v. Kraemer . One integrated housing cooperative petitioned the FHA under the new law, but were told...
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...the actual covenants remained legal until 1972. In fact, three of the justices in the Shelley v. Kraemer case even had these covenants on their own houses, so they recused themselves from the...
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Chapter 7: IRS Support and Compliant Regulators
...They often sponsored neighborhood associations that wrote restrictive covenants into housing deeds, as in the Shelley v. Kraemer case first mentioned in Chapter Five, or openly pushed for segregation in their neighborhoods. Rothstein...
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Chapter 9: State-Sanctioned Violence
...buy a house in 1952. A white friend was leaving Rollingwood, and in the 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer case, the Supreme Court had already decided that restrictive covenants could not be enforced. So...
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