Palmer v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
303 federal appellate · 59 district · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 751 later decisions (54 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2024 · most notably Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. (1977), Washington v. Davis (1976)
303 federal appellate · 59 district · 47 state decisions — followed in 11 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedHazel Palmer v. Allen C. Thompson, Mayor, City of Jackson (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (Civil Rights Act of 1866) · 42 U.S.C. § 1982 (Civil Rights Act of 1866) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1985 · 42 U.S.C. § 2000B
Relies on Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. · Younger v. Harris · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Griswold v. State of Connecticut · United States v. O'Brien
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 751 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[N]o case in this Court has held that a legislative act may violate equal protection solely because of the motivations of [those] who voted for it.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Here the record indicates only that Jackson once ran segregated swimming pools and that no public pools are now maintained by the city. Moreover, there is no evidence in this record to show that the city is now covertly aiding the maintenance and operation of pools which are private in name only. It shows no state action affecting blacks differently from whites. . [T]he issue here is whether black citizens in Jackson are being denied their constitutional rights when the city has closed the public pools to black and white alike. Nothing in the history or the language of the Fourteenth Amendment nor in any of our prior cases persuades us that the closing of the Jackson swimming pools to all its citizens constitutes a denial of “the equal protection of the laws.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Public officials sworn to uphold the Constitution may not avoid a constitutional duty by bowing to the hypothetical effects of private racial prejudice that they assume to be both widely and deeply held.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.