Shelley v. Kraemer

The impact of Shelley on the emerging civil rights struggle was enormous. After this decision, a powerful form of racial discrimination in housing was no longer judicially enforceable.

In February of 1911, 29 of the 30 owners of property in a St. Louis, Missouri, neighborhood signed an agreement not to rent or sell their property to African Americans or Asian Americans. The 29 signatories held 47 of the 57 parcels of land involved. At the time of the signing, five of the parcels were owned by African Americans. One of these African American families had lived on their land since 1882.

In October of 1945, J. D. Shelley and his wife, who were African American, bought a parcel of land in the neighborhood from someone named Fitzgerald. The Shelleys apparently had no knowledge of the restrictive covenant attached to the land. The following October, Louis Kraemer and his wife, who owned other property that was covered by the restrictive covenant, went to the circuit court of the city of St. Louis in an effort to enforce the agreement and take the land deed away from the Shelleys. The trial court ruled against the Kraemers, declaring that the agreement was invalid because it had never been signed by all the affected parties. The Supreme Court of Missouri reversed this decision. The Shelleys then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of the case.