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May 3: Against Housing Discrimination

lawrencebush
May 3, 2011

On this date in 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the legality of “restrictive covenants” in real estate contracts, which had been used for decades to enforce racial and religious segregation in housing. The case, Shelley v. Kraemer, was argued before the Court by two Black attorneys, Thurgood Marshall and Loren Miller; the brief filed by the U.S. government (against restrictive covenants) was written by four prominent Jewish attorneys, Philip Elman, Oscar Davis, Hilbert Zarky and Stanley Silverberg, but their names were omitted so as not to give the impression, said Arnold Raum of the Solicitor General’s office, that “a bunch of Jewish lawyers in the Department of Justice put this out.” The Supreme Court decision, which invoked the 14th Amendment, enabled Jews to move into neighborhoods from which they had been excluded for decades. Racial desegregation in housing, however, would prove far harder to achieve.

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” —14th Amendment