Solicitor General Quotes
The case was Shelley v. Kraemer where the Supreme Court outlawed discriminatory restrictive covenants A restrictive covenant was a condition that was written into the deed on a piece of property. Even if the owner of the home did not want to discriminate, the previous owners who wrote the restrictive covenant into the deed (or his relatives and heirs) could sue and invalidate the sale. In many cases, insurance would not sell title insurance or banks would not give mortgages for a Black or a Jew where there was a covenant in the deed, even if the covenant was more than 100 years old. Homeowner associations would also enforce the covenants which were originally written into all the deeds of the development. Once the supreme court ruled that restrictive covenants were unconstitutional, no court would enforce any of these lawsuits. It was one of the fastest steps forward in the history of Civil Rights since the day after the court decision racists could no longer enforce the covenants that were in tens of millions of deeds in America.
The solicitor general characterized the White House political legal agenda as:
The administration had alleged that the public disclosure of the Pentagon Papers would harm national security. The material was sent to the Solicitor General to prepare the case for the Supreme Court injunction hearing the next day. It was delivered by a senior FBI agent whose responsibility was to guard and protect the secrecy of the material. When the Solicitor General started dictating notes to his secretary, the FBI agent told him that would not be permissible as she did not have a high enough clearance.
