Reitman v. Mulkey/Concurrence Douglas

by William O. Douglas

United States Supreme Court

387 U.S. 369

Reitman  v.  Mulkey

 Argued: March 20 and 21, 1967. --- Decided: May 29, 1967

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, concurring.

While I join the opinion of the Court, I add a word to indicate the dimensions of our problem.

This is not a case as simple as the one where a man with a bicycle or a car or a stock certificate or even a log cabin asserts the right to sell it to whomsoever he pleases, excluding all others whether they be Negro, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Catholics, Baptists, or those with blue eyes. We deal here with a problem in the realm of zoning, similar to the one we had in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161, where we struck down restrictive covenants.

Those covenants are one device whereby a neighborhood is kept 'while' or 'Caucasian' as the dominant interests desire. Proposition 14 in the setting of our modern housing problem is only another device of the same character.

Real estate brokers and mortgage lenders are largely dedicated to the maintenance of segregated communities. ^[1] Realtors commonly believe it is unethical to sell or rent to a Negro in a predominantly white or all-white neighborhood, ^[2] and mortgage lenders throw their weight alongside segregated communities, rejecting applications by members of a minority group who try to break the white phalanx save and unless the neighborhood is in process of conversion into a mixed or a Negro community. ^[3] We are told by the Commission on Civil Rights:

'Property owners' prejudices are reflected, magnified, and sometimes even induced by real estate brokers, through whom most housing changes hands. Organized brokers have, with few exceptions, followed the principle that only a 'homogeneous' neighborhood assures economic soundness. Their views in some cases are so vigorously expressed as to discourage property owners who would otherwise be concerned only with the color of a purchaser's money, and not with that of his skin. ^[4] * * *

'The financial community, upon which mortgage financing-and hence the bulk of home purchasing and home building-depends, also acts to a large extent on the premise that only a homge neous neighborhood can offer an economically sound investment. For this reason, plus the fear of offending their other clients, many mortgage-lending institutions refuse to provide home financing for houses in a 'mixed' neighborhood. The persistent stereotypes of certain minority groups as poor credit risks also block the flow of credit, although these stereotypes have often been proved unjustified.' Housing, U.S.C.ommission on Civil Rights 2-3 (1961).

'* * * private builders often adopt what they believe are the views of those to whom they expect to sell and of the banks upon whose credit their own operations depend. In short, as the Commission on Race and Housing has concluded, 'it is the real estate brokers, builders, and mortgage finance institutions, which translate prejudice into discriminatory action.' Thus, at every level of the private housing market members of minority groups meet mutually reinforcing and often unbreakable barriers of rejection.'

Proposition 14 is a form of sophisticated discrimination ^[5] whereby the people of California harness the energies of private groups to do indirectly what they cannot under our decisions ^[6] allow their government to do.

George A. McCanse, chairman of the legislative committee of the Texas Real Estate Association, while giving his views on Title IV of the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1966 (H.R. 14765), which would prohibit discrimination in housing by property owners, real estate brokers, and others engaged in the sale, rental or financing of housing, stated that he warned groups to which he spoke of 'the grave dangers inherent in any type of legislation that would erode away the rights that go with the ownership of property.' ^[7] He pointed out that

'(E)ach time we citizens of this country lose any of the rights that go with the ownership of property, we are moving that much closer to a centralized government in which ultimately the right to own property would be denied.' ^[8]

That apparently is a common view. It overlooks several things. First, the right to own or lease property is already denied to many solely because of the pigment of their skin; they are, indeed, under the control of a few who determine where and how the colored people shall live and what the nature of our cities will be. Second, the agencies that are zoning the cities along racial lines are state licensees.

Zoning is a state and municipal function. See Euclid, Ohio, v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 389, 47 S.Ct. 114, 118, 71 L.Ed. 303 et seq.; Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 34-35, 75 S.Ct. 98, 103, 99 L.Ed. 27. When the State leaves that function to private agencies or institutions which are licensees and which practice racial discrimination and zone our cities into white and black belts or white and black ghettoes, it suffers a governmental function to be performed under private auspices in a way the State itself may not act. The present case is therefore kin to Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461, 466, 73 S.Ct. 809, 810, 97 L.Ed. 1152, where a State allowed a private group (known as the Jaybird Association, which was the dominant political group in county elections) to perform an electoral function in derogation of the rights of Negroes under the Fifteenth Amendment.

Leaving the zoning function to groups which practice racial discrimination and are licensed by the States constitutes state action in the narrowest sense in which Shelley v. Kraemer, supra, can be construed. For as noted by Mr. Justice Black in Bell v. State of Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 329 8 4 S.Ct. 1814, 1870, 12 L.Ed.2d 822 (dissenting), restrictive covenants 'constituted a restraint on alienation of property, sometimes in perpetuity, which, if valid, was in reality the equivalent of and had the effect of state and municipal zoning laws, accomplishing the same kind of racial discrimination as if the State had passed a statute instead of leaving this objective to be accomplished by a system of private contracts, enforced by the State.'

Under California law no person may 'engage in the business, act in the capacity of, advertise or assume to act as a real estate broker or a real estate salesman within this State without first obtaining a real estate license.' Calif.Bus. & Prof.Code § 10130. These licensees are designated to serve the public. Their licenses are not restricted, and could not be restricted, to effectuate a policy of segregation. That would be state action that is barred by the Fourteenth Amendment. There is no difference, as I see it, between a State authorizing a licensee to practice racial discrimination and a State, without any express authorization of that kind nevertheless launching and countenancing the operation of a licensing system in an environment where the whole weight of the system is on the side of discrimination. In the latter situation the State is impliedly sanctioning what it may not do specifically.

If we were in a domain exclusively private, we would have different problems. But urban housing is in the public domain as evidenced not only by the zoning problems presented but by the vast schemes of public financing with which the States and the Nation have been extensively involved in recent years. Urban housing is clearly marked with the public interest. Urban housing, like restaurants, inns, and carriers (Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 253-255, 84 S.Ct. 1814, 1829-1830, separate opinion), or like telephone companies, drugstores, or hospitals, is affected with a public interest in the historic and classical sense. See Lombard v. State of Louisiana, 373 U.S. 267, 275-278, 83 S.Ct. 1122, 1126 1127 (concurring opinion).

I repeat what was stated by Holt, C.J., in Lane v. Cotton, 12 Mod. 472, 484 (1701):

'(W)herever any subject takes upon himself a public trust for the benefit of the rest of his fellow-subjects, he is eo ipso bound to serve the subject in all the things that are within the reach and comprehension of such an office, under pain of an action against him * * *. If on the road a shoe fall off my horse, and I come to a smith to have one put on, and the smith refuse to do it, an action will lie against him, because he has made profession of a trade which is for the public good, and has thereby exposed and vested an interest of himself in all the King's subjects that will employ him in the way of his trade. If an innkeeper refuse to entertain a guest where his house is not full, an action will lie against him, and so against a carrier, if his horses be not loaded, and he refuse to take a packet proper to be sent by a carrier.'

Since the real estate brokerage business is one that can be and is state-regulated and since it is state-licensed, it must be dedicated, like the telephone companies and the carriers and the hotels and motels to the requirements of service to all without discrimination-a standard that in its modern setting is conditioned by the demands of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

And to those who say that Proposition 14 represents the will of the people of California, one can only reply:

'Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. This is a truth of great importance, but not yet sufficiently attendd to * * *.' 5 Writings of James Madison 272 (Hunt ed. 1904).

Mr. Justice HARLAN, whom Mr. Justice BLACK, Mr. Justice CLARK, and Mr. Justice STEWART join, dissenting.

I consider that this decision, which cuts deeply into state political processes, is supported neither by anything 'found' by the Supreme Court of California nor by any of our past cases decided under the Fourteenth Amendment. In my view today's holding, salutary as its result may appear at first blush, may in the long run actually serve to handicap progress in the extremely difficult field of racial concerns. I must respectfully dissent.

The facts of this case are simple and undisputed. The legislature of the State of California has in the last decade enacted a number of statutes restricting the right of private landowners to discriminate on the basis of such factors as race in the sale or rental of property. These laws aroused considerable opposition, causing certain groups to organize themselves and to take advantage of procedures embodied in the California Constitution permitting a 'proposition' to be presented to the voters for a constitutional amendment. 'Proposition 14' was thus put before the electorate in the 1964 election and was adopted by a vote of 4,526,460 to 2,395,747. The Amendment, Art. I, § 26, of the State Constitution, reads in relevant part as follows:

'Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses.' ^[9]

I am wholly at a loss to understand how this straight-forward effectuation of a change in the California Constitution can be deemed a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, thus rendering § 26 void and petitioners' refusal to rent their properties to respondents, because of their race, illegal under prior state law. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids a State to use its authority to foster discrimination based on such factors as race, Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm'n, 334 U.S. 410, 68 S.Ct. 1138, 92 L.Ed. 1478; Browken v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873; Goss v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 683, 83 S.Ct. 1405, 10 L.Ed.2d 632, does not undertake to control purely personal prejudices and predilections, and individuals acting on their own are left free to discriminate on racial grounds if they are so minded, Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835. By the same token, the Fourteenth Amendment does not require of States the passage of laws preventing such private discrimination, although it does not of course disable them from enacting such legislation if they wish.

In the case at hand California, acting through the initiative and referendum, has decided to remain 'neutral' in the realm of private discrimination affecting the sale or rental of private residential property; in such transactions private owners are now free to act in a discriminatory manner previously forbidden to them. In short, all that has happened is that California has effected a pro tanto repeal of its prior statutes forbidding private discrimination. This runs no more afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment than would have California's failure to pass any such antidiscrimination statutes in the first instance. The fact that such repeal was also accompanied by a constitutional prohibition against future enactment of such laws by he California Legislature cannot well be thought to affect, from a federal constitutional standpoint, the validity of what California has done. The Fourteenth Amendment does not reach such state constitutional action any more than it does a simple legislative repeal of legislation forbidding private discrimination.

I do not think the Court's opinion really denies any of these fundamental constitutional propositions. Rather it attempts to escape them by resorting to arguments which appear to me to be entirely ill-founded.

The Court attempts to fit § 26 within the coverage of the Equal Protection Clause by characterizing it as in effect an affirmative call to residents of California to discriminate. The main difficulty with this viewpoint is that it depends upon a characterization of § 26 that cannot fairly be made. The provision is neutral on its face, and it is only by in effect asserting that this requirement of passive official neutrality is camouflage that the Court is able to reach its conclusion. In depicting the provision as tantamount to active state encouragement of discrimination the Court essentially relies on the fact that the California Supreme Court so concluded. It is said that the findings of the highest court of California as to the meaning and impact of the enactment are entitled to great weight. I agree, of course, that findings of fact by a state court should be given great weight, but this familiar proposition hardly aids the Court's holding in this case.

There is no disagreement whatever but that § 26 was meant to nullify California's fair-housing legislation and thus to remove from private residential property transactions the state-created impediment upon freedom of choice. There were no disputed issues of fact at all, and indeed the California Supreme Court noted at the outset of its opinion that '(i)n the trial court proceedings allegations of the complaint were not factually challenged, no evidence was introduced, and the only matter placed in issue was the legal sufficiency of the allegations.' 64 Cal.2d 529, 531-532, 50 Cal.Rptr. 881, 883, 413 P.2d 825, 827. There was no finding, for example, that the defendants' actions were anything but the product of their own private choice. Indeed, since the alleged racial discrimination that forms the basis for the Reitman refusal to rent on racial grounds occurred in 1963, it is not possible to contend that § 26 in any way influenced this particular act. There were no findings as to the general effect of § 26. The Court declares that the California court 'held the intent of § 26 was to authorize private racial discriminations in the housing market * * *,' ante, p. 376, but there is no supporting fact in the record for this characterization. Moreover, the grounds which prompt legislators or state voters to repeal a law do not determine its constitutional validity. That question is decided by what the law does, not by what those who voted for it wanted it to do, and it must not be forgotten that the Fourteenth Amendment does not compel a State to put or keep any particular law about race on its books. The Amendment only forbids a State to pass or keep in effect laws discriminating on account of race. California has not done this.

A state enactment, particularly one that is simply permissive of private decision-making rather than coercive and one that has been adopted in this most democratic of processes, should not be struck down by the judiciary under the Equal Protection Clause without persuasive evidence of an invidious purpose or effect. The only 'factual' matter relied on by the majority of the California Supreme Court was the context in which Proposition 14 was adopted, namely, that several strong antidiscrimination acts had been passed by the legislature and opposed by many of those who successfully led the movement for adoption of Proposition 14 by popular referendum. These circumstances, and these alone, the California court held, made § 26 unlawful under tis Court's cases interpreting the Equal Protection Clause. This, of course, is nothing but a legal conclusion as to federal constitutional law, the California Supreme Court not having relied in any way upon the State Constitution. Accepting all the suppositions under which the state court acted, I cannot see that its conclusion is entitled to any special weight in the discharge of our own responsibilities. Put in another way, I cannot transform the California court's conclusion of law into a finding of fact that the State through the adoption of § 26 is actively promoting racial discrimination. It seems to me manifest that the state court decision rested entirely on what that court conceived to be the compulsion of the Fourteenth Amendment, not on any fact-finding by the state courts.

There is no question that the adoption of § 26, repealing the former state anti-discrimination laws and prohibiting the enactment of such state laws in the future, constituted 'state action' within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The only issue is whether this provision impermissibly deprives any person of equal protection of the laws. As a starting point, it is clear that any statute requiring unjustified discriminatory treatment is unconstitutional. E.g., Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U.S. 536, 47 S.Ct. 446; Brown v. Board of Education, supra; Peterson v. City of Greenville, 373 U.S. 244, 83 S.Ct. 1119, 10 L.Ed.2d 323. And it is no less clear that the Equal Protection Clause bars as well discriminatory governmental administration of a statute fair on its face. E.g., Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220. This case fits within neither of these two categories: Section 26 is by its terms inoffensive, and its provisions require no affirmative governmental enforcement of any sort. A third category of equal-protection cases, concededly more difficult to characterize, stands for the proposition that when governmental involvement in private discrimination reaches a level at which the State can be held responsible for the specific act of private discrimination, the strictures of the Fourteenth Amendment come into play. In dealing with this class of cases, the inquiry has been framed as whether the State has become 'a joint participant in the challenged activity, which, on that account, cannot be considered to have been so 'purely private' as to fall without the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment.' Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715, 725, 81 S.Ct. 856, 862, 6 L.Ed.2d 45.

Given these latter contours of the equal-protection doctrine, the assessment of particular cases is often troublesome, as the Court itself acknowledges. Ante, pp. 378-379. However, the present case does not seem to me even to approach those peripheral situations in which the question of state involvement gives rise to difficulties. See, e.g., Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296, 86 S.Ct. 486, 15 L.Ed.2d 373; Lombard v. State of Louisiana, 373 U.S. 267, 83 S.Ct. 1122, 10 L.Ed.2d 338. The core of the Court's opinion is that § 26 is offensive to the Fourteenth Amendment because it effectively encourages private discrimination. By focusing on 'encouragement' the Court, I fear, is forging a slippery and unfortunate criterion by which to measure the constitutionality of a statute simply permissive in purpose and effect, and inoffensive on its face.

It is true that standards in this area have not been definitely formulated, and that acts of discrimination have been included within the compass of the Equal Protection Clause not merely when they were compelled by a state statute or other governmental pressures, but also when they were said to be 'induced' or 'authorized' by the State. Most of these cases, however, can be approached in terms of the impact and extent of affirmative state governmental activities, e.g., the action of a sheriff, Lombard v. Louisiana, supra; the official supervision over a park, Evans v. Newton, supra; a joint venture with a lessee in a munci pally owned building, Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, supra. ^[10] In situations such as these the focus has been on positive state cooperation or partnership in affirmatively promoted activities, an involvement that could have been avoided. Here, in contrast, we have only the straight-forward adoption of a neutral provision restoring to the sphere of free choice, left untouched by the Fourteenth Amendment, private behavior within a limited area of the racial problem. The denial of equal protection emerges only from the conclusion reached by the Court that the implementation of a new policy of governmental neutrality, embodied in a constitutional provision and replacing a former policy of antidiscrimination, has the effect of lending encouragement to those who wish to discriminate. In the context of the actual facts of the case, this conclusion appears to me to state only a truism: people who want to discriminate but were previously forbidden to do so by state law are now left free because the State has chosen to have no law on the subject at all. Obviously whenever there is a change in the law it will have resulted from the concerted activity of those who desire the change, and its enactment will allow those supporting the legislation to pursue their private goals.

A moment of thought will reveal the far-reaching possibilities of the Court's new doctrine, which I am sure the Court does not intend. Every act of private discrimination is either forbidden by state law or permitted by it. There can be little doubt that such permissiveness-whether by express constitutional or statutory provision, or implicit in the common law-to some extent 'encourages' those who wish to discriminate to do so. Under this theory 'state action' in the form of laws that do nothing more than passively permit private discrimination could be said to tinge all private discrimination with the taint of unconstitutional state encouragement.

This type of alleged state involvement, simply evincing a refusal to involve itself at all, is of course very different from that illustrated in such cases as Lombard, Peterson, Evans and Burton, supra, where the Court found active involvement of state agencies and officials in specific acts of discrimination. It is also quite different from cases in which a state enactment could be said to have the obvious purpose of fostering discrimination. Anderson v. Martin, 375 U.S. 399, 84 S.Ct. 454, 11 L.Ed.2d 430. I believe the state action required to bring the Fourteenth Amendment into operation must be affirmative and purposeful, actively fostering discrimination. Only in such a case is ostensibly 'private' action more properly labeled 'official.' I do not believe that the mere enactment of § 26, on the showing made here, falls within this class of cases.

I think that this decision is not only constitutionally unsound, but in its practical potentialities short-sighted. Opponents of stat antidiscrimination statute a re now in a position to argue that such legislation should be defeated because, if enacted, it may be unrepealable. More fundamentally, the doctrine underlying this decision may hamper, if not preclude, attempts to deal with the delicate and troublesome problems of race relations through the legislative process. The lines that have been and must be drawn in this area, fraught as it is with human sensibilities and frailties of whatever race or creed, are difficult ones. The drawing of them requires understanding, patience, and compromise, and is best done by legislatures rather than by courts. When legislation in this field is unsuccessful there should be wide opportunities for legislative amendment, as well as for change through such processes as the popular initiative and referendum. This decision, I fear, may inhibit such flexibility. Here the electorate itself overwhelmingly wished to overrule and check its own legislature on a matter left open by the Federal Constitution. By refusing to accept the decision of the people of California, and by contriving a new and ill-defined constitutional concept to allow federal judicial interference, I think the Court has taken to itself powers and responsibilities left elsewhere by the Constitution.

I believe the Supreme Court of California misapplied the Fourteenth Amendment, and would reverse its judgments, and remand the case for further appropriate proceedings.

Notes

1. Civil Rights U.S.A., Housing in Washington, D.C., U.S.C.ommission on Civil Rights 12-15 (1962).
2. Id., 12-13.
3. Id., 14-15.
4. As the Hannah Commission said:
5. Freedom to the Free, Century of Emancipation, Report to the President, U.S.C.ommission on Civil Rights 96 (1963).
6. City of Richmond v. Deans, 281 U.S. 704, 50 S.Ct. 407, 74 L.Ed. 1128.
7. Hearings before Subcommittee No. 5 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong., 2d Sess., ser. 16, 1639 (1966).
8. Ibid.
9. 'Real Property' is defined by § 26 as 'any interest in real property of any kind 'any interest in real property of any kind or quality, present or future, irrespective of how obtained or financed, which is used, designed, constructed, zoned or otherwise devoted to or limited for residential purposes whether as a single family dwelling or as a dwelling for two or more persons or families living together or independently of each other.'
10. In McCabe v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. Co., 235 U.S. 151, 35 S.Ct. 69, 59 L.Ed. 169, cited by the Court, the complaint of the Negro appellants was held to have been properly dismissed on the ground that its allegations were 'altogether too vague and indefinite,' id., at 163, 35 S.Ct. 71. In dictum the Court stated that where a State regulated the facilities of a common carrier it could not constitutionally enact a statute that did not comply with the 'separate but equal' doctrine. Whatever the implications of the Fourteenth Amendment may be as to common carriers, compare the opinions of Goldberg, J., concurring, and Black, J., dissenting, in Bell v. State of Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 286 318, 84 S.Ct. 1814, 1847, 1864, 12 L.Ed.2d 822, nothing in McCabe would appear to have much relevance to the problem before us today.

Neither is there force in the Court's reliance on Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73, 52 S.Ct. 484, 76 L.Ed. 984, a voting case decided under the Fifteenth as well as the Fourteenth Amendment.