Palmer v. Thompson

Supreme Court of the United States
1971 U.S. LEXIS 27, 403 U.S. 217, 29 L. Ed. 2d 438 (1971)

ELI5:

Rule of Law:

A government's action to close a public facility to all citizens does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, even if motivated by a desire to avoid desegregation, so long as the effects of the closing are borne equally by all races and the government is not covertly involved in providing segregated facilities.

Facts:

The City of Jackson, Mississippi, operated five public swimming pools on a racially segregated basis, with four designated for whites and one for Black residents.
Following a federal court judgment declaring segregation in public facilities unconstitutional, the City of Jackson desegregated its public parks, auditoriums, golf courses, and zoo.
Instead of desegregating the public swimming pools, the city council voted to close all of them.
The city surrendered its lease on one pool and permanently closed the four pools it owned.
After the closures, the city no longer operated any public swimming pools for any of its citizens, regardless of race.
One of the formerly leased pools was subsequently operated by the YMCA on a whites-only basis, and a formerly city-owned pool was sold and eventually operated by the predominantly black Jackson State College for its students.
The record contained no evidence that the City of Jackson was directly or indirectly involved in the funding or operation of the pools run by the YMCA or the college after the public closures.

Procedural Posture:

In a prior 1962 case, Black citizens sued the City of Jackson, leading to a declaratory judgment from the U.S. District Court that segregation of public facilities was unconstitutional, though the court declined to issue an injunction.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed that decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.
Following that litigation and the city's subsequent closure of the pools, petitioners filed the present class action suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi seeking to compel the city to reopen the pools on a desegregated basis.
The District Court found the city's action was justified and did not deny equal protection, dismissing the complaint.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed the District Court's judgment.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the decision of the Court of Appeals.

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Issue:

Does a city's action of closing all of its public swimming pools to everyone, black and white alike, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when the decision was made to avoid operating them on a desegregated basis?

Opinions:

Majority - Mr. Justice Black

No, the city's action of closing its public swimming pools to all citizens does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. The Fourteenth Amendment does not impose an affirmative duty on a state to operate swimming pools, and here the city has withdrawn from providing this service to everyone equally. The Court distinguished Griffin v. County School Board, noting that unlike in Griffin, Jackson completely ceased operating swimming pools and did not use public funds to support a system of private, segregated alternatives. The Court also rejected the argument that the council's motive to avoid integration rendered the action unconstitutional, stating that judicial inquiry into legislative motivation is fraught with difficulty and that a facially neutral law should not be invalidated based on the 'bad motives' of its supporters. Because the closing affects both black and white citizens in the same way, there is no denial of equal protection.

Concurring - Mr. Chief Justice Burger

No. To hold that a public facility, once opened, is constitutionally 'locked in' and cannot be closed would discourage governments from expanding needed services in the first place. Finding an equal protection issue in every termination of a desirable public service would distort the meaning of the constitutional guarantee. All that is good is not commanded by the Constitution.

Concurring - Mr. Justice Blackmun

No. On balance, several factors support affirming the city's action: all other municipal facilities were successfully desegregated, the pools are a non-essential service, they operated at a deficit, and the closing cannot be read as an official expression of racial inferiority on this record. To rule for the petitioners would be punitive and would problematically 'lock in' the city to operating the pools indefinitely, regardless of economic consequences, simply because they were once segregated.

Dissenting - Mr. Justice Douglas

Yes, the city's action violates the Equal Protection Clause. A state may not discontinue a municipal service for the purpose of perpetuating apartheid or because it finds life in a multiracial community difficult. The closing of the pools teaches Black citizens that the price of protesting segregation is the loss of the facility altogether, thus chilling the assertion of their constitutional rights. This action falls within the penumbra of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and perpetuates a segregated way of life.

Dissenting - Mr. Justice White

Yes, the city's action violates the Equal Protection Clause. Closing the pools in response to a desegregation order is an official policy statement that Black citizens are unfit to associate with whites, a denigration forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court should consider the city's motive, as it does in many other civil rights contexts. The city's justifications of safety and economy were merely 'vague disquietudes' unsupported by evidence, directly contrary to Watson v. City of Memphis. The closing stigmatizes the minority race, serves as a reminder of official support for inferiority, and deters future legal challenges against segregation for fear of similar facility closures.

Dissenting - Mr. Justice Marshall

Yes, the city's action violates the Equal Protection Clause. Citing Shelley v. Kraemer, this dissent argues that equal protection is not achieved 'through indiscriminate imposition of inequalities.' When Jackson denied a single Black child the right to swim because of his race, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment, and the fact that white children were also denied the facility is irrelevant. By allowing the closure of pools but not schools, the majority improperly carves out an exception to Fourteenth Amendment protection for recreational facilities and turns the clock back on civil rights progress.

Analysis:

This decision established that a facially neutral government action that has an equal impact on all races is constitutionally permissible, even if it was motivated by racial discrimination. It prioritized the 'effect' of the action over the 'motive,' making it significantly more difficult to challenge policies that seemed to be a retreat from integration. The ruling created a controversial precedent allowing municipalities to eliminate public services altogether rather than desegregate them, effectively giving a tool to jurisdictions resistant to integration. This holding has been narrowed and distinguished by later cases, particularly Washington v. Davis, which established that discriminatory purpose, not just disproportionate impact, is required to prove an Equal Protection violation.

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