Racial Covenants
The contracts were between private parties and therefore believed to be bulletproof to civil rights challenges based on the 1926 Corrigan v. Buckley decision. In that case the Court ruled that it lacked the jurisdiction to scrutinize private contracts and that the NAACP’s use of the Constitution to address them was “plainly without color of merit and frivolous”. Not to be deterred, the NAACP came back to the Court in the 1948 case, Shelly v. Kramer, which finally took actions against restrictive covenants. The Court ruled unanimously that the racial covenants themselves were not void, the government cannot enforce them because that would constitute a state action under the 14th Amendment. While considered a victory, Shelly v. Kramer’s real-world effects in terms of dismantling housing discrimination were minimal. Racism is a hard habit to break.