HOUSING ( Right of Sale Restrictive Covenants )

HOUSING ( Right of Sale and Restrictive Covenants )

BUCHANAN v. WARLEY

245 US 60 (1917)

( Justice Day delivered the opinion)

The plaintiff Buchanan brought an action in the case for the performance of a sale of certain real estate in Louisville, Kentucky. The purchaser, Warley (a Black man), maintained that he would be unable to occupy the land since it was located within what was defined by a Louisville ordinance as a white block. (The ordinance profited whites from living in black districts, and vice versa. ) Buchanan alleged that the ordinance was in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The U.S. Supreme Court maintained that the ordinance was unconstitutional.
HARMON v. TYLER

273 US 668 (1927)

On the authority of Buchanan v. Warley, a similar New Orleans residential ordinance which was upheld by the lower court was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
CITY OF RICHMOND v. DEANS

281 US 704 (1930)

The U.S. Supreme Court, again on the basis of Buchanan v. Warley, struck down the ruling of a lower court and declared a Richmond residential segregation ordinance unconstitutional.
SHELLEY v. KRAEMER

334 US 1 (1948)

HURD v. HODGE

334 US 26 (1948)

(Chief Justice Vinson delivered both opinions).

On August 11, 1945, a black family, the Shelleys, received a warranty deed to a parcel of land which, unknown to, them, was subject to a restrictive covenant barring its sale to black people. Suit was subsequently brought in the Circuit Court of St. Louis seeking to divest the Shelleys of title to the land. The Supreme Court of Missouri directed the trial court to strip the petitioners of said title.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed this decision, maintaining that restrictive Covenants, thought valid contracts, could not be enforced by state courts. In the Hurd v. Hodge case, involving a similar set of circumstances, federal courts were similarly prohibited from enforcing such restrictive covenants.
BARROWS v. JACKSON

346 US 249 (1953)

The U.S. Supreme Court in this case held it to be a violation of the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment for a state court to award damages for the violation of a restrictive covenants.
REITMAN v. MULKEY

387 US 369 (1967)

In 1964 the California electorate voted in favor of a referendum granting "absolute discretion" to real estate owners in the sale and rental of real property, in effect voiding the state's fair housing laws. Lincoln Mulkey filed suit against property owners in Orange County to challenge the validity of the referendum. Mulkey's position failed in the lower courts but was sustained 5 to 2 by the California Supreme Court on the grounds that the California referendum violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision.
THORPE v. HOUSING AUTHORITY

393 US 268 (1969)

(Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion.)

The Supreme Court declared that tenants of federally assisted housing projects cannot be evicted without being first informed of the reason and given an opportunity to reply or explain.
KENNEDY PARK HOMES ASSN. v. CITY OF LACKAWANNA

401 US 1010 (1971)

The Supreme Courts refused to review a lower court decision granting blacks the right to build a low-income housing project in a section of the city largely inhabited by whites.
TRAFFICANTE v. METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE

409 US 205 (1972)

(Justice Douglas delivered the opinion.)

The Supreme Court ruled that a complaint of racial discrimination in housing may be brought by parties who have not themselves been refused accommodation but who, as members of the same housing unit, allege injury by discriminatory housing practices. The suit had been filed by a black and a white resident of a housing development in San Francisco, who contended that the owner of the development, in maintaining a "white ghetto," was depriving plaintiffs of the right to live in a racially integrated community.
JAMES v. VALTIERRA

402 US 137 (1971)

The Supreme Court upheld a ruling that local voters could veto projected plans for low-rent housing projects. The ruling affirmed a decision which held that no low-income projected could be developed without the majority vote of a city, town or county in a referendum where such process was duly provided for in law.