Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323 [Segregation]
1926, Washington, District of Columbia
Court Opinion Delivered by: Justice Edward T. Sanford
Attorney for the Plaintiff: Louis Marshall, Moorfield Storey, James A. Cobb, William H. Lewis, James P. Schick, Arthus B. Spingarn, and Herbert K Stockton
Attorney for the Defendant: James S. Easby-Smith, David A. Pine, Francis W. Hill
John J. Buckley sued his neighbor, Irene Hand Corrigan of Washington D.C., in order to prevent her from selling residential property to an African-American woman. Buckley asserted that a restrictive covenant entered into by Corrigan prevented her from selling her property to a member of the “Negro race.” The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia agreed that Buckley had the right to enforce the covenant, and the U. S. Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling decided that it had no jurisdiction in the case. The Court’s ruling noted that those sections of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments referring to equal protection under the laws, applied only to governmental actions not to private contracts. Although acknowledging that restrictive housing covenants were discriminatory, they did not violate the Constitution because no governmental actions occurred. This decision recognized the constitutional right of African Americans to acquire, own, and occupy property, but such right, in the Court’s opinion, does not carry with it the constitutional power to compel the sale and conveyance to anyone of any particular private property. The Court’s stand pushed open the door for racial segregation in housing. That door would stand open until the Court held in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) that housing covenants were not enforceable by the courts because such intervention would be government action prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24 [Segregation]
1948, Washington, District of Columbia
Court Opinion Delivered by: Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson
Attorney for the Plaintiff: Charles H. Houston, Phineas Indritz
Attorney for the Defendant: Henry Gilligan, James A. Cooks, Philip B. Perlman
This was a companion case to Shelley v. Kraemer and McGhee v. Sipes (1948) involving the constitutionality of racially restrictive housing contracts or covenants. Such covenants were widely used in American cities to prevent the integration of white neighborhoods. Suits filed by white respondents in the District Court for Washington D.C. asked it to uphold the covenants and to require reversal of the home sales and eviction of the black residents. The District Court found for the white respondents, as did the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, with one justice dissenting. The U.S. Supreme Court did not address the due process question but instead noted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed the right of all citizens equally “to inherit, purchase, sell, hold and convey” real property. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief with the Court supporting Hurd and citing the recently released President’s Commission on the Status of Civil Rights report, “To Secure These Rights.”

Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 Bolling v. Sharpe 347 U.S. 497 [Segregation]
1954, Washington, District of Columbia
Court Opinion Delivered by: Chief Justice Earl Warren
Attorney for the Plaintiff: George E. C. Hayes, James M. Nabrit
Attorney for the Defendant: Milton D. Korman
This case was linked to a group of four other cases that went before the U. S. Supreme court as one of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education cases, which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. This case differed from the other cases subsumed under Brown, which argued that school segregation violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Blacks residing in Washington D. C., could not use the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from denying citizens equl protection of the laws but not the federal government. In Bolling, the Court ruled that discrimination can be “so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process” and that segregation in the District of Columbia was such a case. This ruling used the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process to extend the Court’s ruling regarding states to the federal government. It’s opinion clearly said as much: ”In view of our decision that the Constitution prohibits it’s the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools, it would be unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government.” Although Bolling was linked by the Court to the other cases heard under the nomenclature Brown v. Board of Education, it was not argued by an NAACP attorney.