Palmore v. Sidoti

The Court recognized the existence of racial biases in society but held that the law cannot govern in deference to those biases.

The Supreme Court rarely hears child custody cases, but it issued a ruling in Palmore v. Sidoti because a constitutional issue was at stake: whether awarding custody based on anticipated racial prejudices violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Reversing the judgments of the lower courts, the Supreme Court ruled that a parent may not be deprived of child custody solely because he or she is involved in an interracial relationship that might cause the child to face harassment from a disapproving society.

When Linda Sidoti Palmore and Anthony J. Sidoti, both white, were divorced in May of 1980, custody of their three-year old daughter Melanie was awarded to the mother. In September of 1981, the father filed a petition to change the custody status because the living environment at the mother's house had changed. The father said that on several occasions the mother had not properly looked after their daughter, and he protested that the mother was living with a black man, Clarence Palmore, Jr., whom the mother married in November of 1981.

While noting the father's allegations about the mother's treatment of Melanie, the Florida trial court found that both parents were unquestionably devoted to their child and able to provide adequate housing for her. The trial court also said the new spouses of both parents were respectable people. In marrying a black man, however, the mother had created a home environment that both the father and many people in society found unacceptable, the trial court said.

This Court feels that despite the strides that have been made in bettering relations between the races in this country, it is inevitable that Melanie will, if allowed to remain in her present situation . . . , suffer from the social stigmatization that is sure to come.

The trial court awarded custody to the father, and Florida's Second District Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling without issuing a written opinion. A unanimous Supreme Court then reversed the rulings of the lower courts. The heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chief Justice Burger argued, was to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination imposed by the government. In order to be allowed under the Constitution, racial classifications must serve a "compelling governmental interest" and be absolutely necessary for meeting that purpose. The state's duty to protect children from being harassed by racially intolerant people is a compelling interest, Burger wrote, but it is unconstitutional to protect the children by codifying social prejudices into law.

The Constitution cannot control such prejudices but neither can it tolerate them. Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.

Burger cited the Supreme Court's ruling in a similar case, Buchanan v. Warley (1917), in which the Court overturned a Kentucky law prohibiting blacks from buying houses in white residential areas. Although the ordinance aimed to preserve the public peace by making racial confrontations less likely, it did so by taking away constitutionally protected rights.

Recognizing the reality of racial prejudices in American society, Burger said a child living with a racially mixed couple might face problems that a child living with homogenous parents would not. Still, the Court had "little difficulty" concluding that anticipated racial prejudice in society was not sufficient justification for overriding the constitutional right to equal protection under the law.