Keywords
foreword; symposium; family law
Abstract
Forty years ago, Mrs. Inez Moore, a widowed black mother and grandmother of little means, secured a victory that likely seemed improbable to many. Without any money, but with the assistance of a team of dedicated Legal Aid attorneys, she took her lawsuit challenging an East Cleveland, Ohio, zoning ordinance that made it a crime for her to live with her grandson all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won. The ordinance permitted certain extended family configurations to reside together within the city’s limits, but it prohibited Inez’s family arrangement. Just by bringing her infant grandson John Jr., upon his mother’s death, to live in the home in which she already resided with her son, Dale Sr., and his minor son, Dale Jr., Inez ran afoul of a housing code provision that local officials vigorously enforced. For her refusal to heed their demands that she basically evict John Jr. from the only home he had ever known, Inez faced not only a criminal fine but jail time as well.
Recommended Citation
Robin A. Lenhardt and Clare Huntington,
Foreword: Moore Kinship,
85 Fordham L. Rev. 2551
(2017).
Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol85/iss6/2