A restrictive covenant purported to bar Black people from owning or occupying property in a Chicago neighborhood if owners of 95% of the frontage had signed the agreement. In earlier Illinois litigation, a state court had upheld the covenant in a representative class action and treated the 95% requirement as satisfied. The Hansberry family, who were Black purchasers of property covered by the covenant, were later sued by neighboring landowners led by Lee to enforce the restriction against them. The Hansberrys argued that the earlier judgment could not bind them because the prior class suit did not adequately represent their interests.
Does the Due Process Clause permit a state court to bind absent parties through a class action judgment when their interests were not adequately represented in the earlier litigation?
A judgment in a class or representative action may bind absent parties only when the procedure affords due process, including adequate representation of the absent persons' interests. A state may not, consistent with due process, preclude a person from litigating rights by treating them as represented in prior litigation where the representatives had conflicting or inadequate interests.
No. The earlier Illinois class-action judgment could not constitutionally bind the Hansberrys because the parties in that litigation did not adequately represent the interests of all persons supposedly in the class.
The Court explained that representative suits can bind absent parties only when those parties are in fact adequately represented by others with the same interests. In the earlier covenant litigation, the supposed class contained owners with divergent interests: some wanted enforcement of the covenant, while others had an interest in showing that the 95% signature requirement had not been met and thus that the covenant was invalid. Because of that conflict, the prior plaintiffs could not fairly represent all members of the class, and applying res judicata against the Hansberrys would deny due process. The Court therefore rejected the state court's use of the earlier decree to foreclose the Hansberrys' defense.
Hansberry is a foundational due process case on the limits of binding absent class members and the constitutional requirement of adequate representation in class actions. It helped shape modern class-action doctrine later reflected in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 and influenced decisions such as Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797 (1985), and Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880 (2008). The case is also historically significant because it arose from judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants, an area later transformed by Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).
Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797 (1985) |
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Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880 (2008) |
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Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) |
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