Buchanan v. Warley

Appellant

William Warley

Appellee

William H. Buchanan

Appellant's Claim

Defendant illegally refused to pay full contracted price for a home lot. He claimed a city ordinance prohibiting blacks from living in white neighborhoods deprived him of property's full value.

Chief Lawyers for Appellant

Moorfield Storey, Clayton B. Blakey

Chief Lawyers for Appellee

Pendleton Beckley, Stuart Chevalier

Justices for the Court

Louis D. Brandeis, John Hessin Clarke, William R. Day (writing for the Court), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph McKenna, James Clark McReynolds, Mahlon Pitney, Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglass White

Justices Dissenting

None

Place

Washington, D.C.

Date of Decision

5 November 1917

Decision

Outlawed local ordinances preventing blacks from moving into white neighborhoods as unconstitutional interference with private property sales between whites and blacks.

Related Cases

• Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
• Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323 (1926).
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).