supreme court ruling on changing hoa covenants

They would affect a wide swath of the nation’s non-white communities. until they were outlawed with the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. This meant that restrictive covenants would continue to be broadly implemented-and socially enforced-in cities and suburbs across the U.S. However, the ruling also acknowledged that these covenants, as private agreements, were not in and of themselves a constitutional violation, and could continue to be used to exclude people from occupying or purchasing real estate on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. Kraemer decision, justices ruled unanimously in favor of the Shelleys, writing that restrictive covenants couldn’t be legally enforced by state or federal courts because such discriminatory governmental action violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Louis circuit court, the case escalated to the U.S. That covenant, mirroring ones inserted widely into deeds around the country, forbid the use or sale of property to people of the “Negro or Mongolian race.”Īfter several of the neighborhood’s white residents fought the Shelleys’ purchase in the St.

Problem was: In selling the modest, two-story brick dwelling to a Black family, the home’s white owners had defied a 34-year-old restrictive covenant agreed to by the neighborhood’s white residents. and Ethel Lee Shelley, an African American couple, purchased a home for their family in a white St.

Supreme court ruling on changing hoa covenants