Thorpe v. Housing Authority of Durham, 386 U.S. 670 (1967)

Citation: Thorpe v. Housing Authority of Durham, 386 U.S. 670 (1967)
Parent Document: Thorpe v. Housing Authority of Durham, 386 U.S. 670 (1967)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 1967-06-05
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/107416/thorpe-v-housing-authority-of-durham/ ↗

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The recipient of a government benefit, be it a tax exemption (Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513), unemployment *679 compensation (Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398), public employment (Slochower v. Board of Education, 350 U. S. 551), a license to practice law (Spevack v. Klein, 385 U. S. 511), or a home in a public housing project, cannot be made to forfeit the benefit because he exercises a constitutional right. In United States v. Chicago, M., St. P. & P. R. Co., 282 U. S. 311, 328-329, the Court said that "the right to continue the exercise of a privilege granted by the state cannot be made to depend upon the grantee's submission to a condition prescribed by the state which is hostile to the provisions of the federal constitution." This was in the tradition of Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Comm'n, 271 U. S. 583, 594, where the Court emphasized that "If the state may compel the surrender of one constitutional right as a condition of its favor, it may, in like manner, compel a surrender of all. It is inconceivable that guaranties embedded in the Constitution of the United States may thus be manipulated out of existence." In Speiser v. Randall, supra, at 518, we recognized that "To deny an exemption to claimants who engage in certain forms of speech is in effect to penalize them for such speech. Its deterrent effect is the same as if the State were to fine them for this speech. The appellees are plainly mistaken in their argument that, because a tax exemption is a `privilege' or `bounty,' its denial may not infringe speech." No more can a tenant in a public housing project be evicted for the exercise of her right of association, a right protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. See, e. g., NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U. S. 449, 460; Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U. S. 516, 523; Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 486; Louisiana v. NAACP, 366 U. S. 293, 296; NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 430-431.

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