In Thorpe v. Housing Authority of the City of Durham (1968), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a local housing authority could not evict a tenant without providing them with an opportunity for a hearing to contest their eviction, as it violated due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved Mary Elizabeth Thorpe, who was served an eviction notice from her public housing unit by the Durham City Housing Authority in North Carolina without any reason or chance to dispute it. The court held that federal regulations required such hearings before evictions and these rules applied retroactively, even though they were issued after Thorpe's initial legal challenge but before her appeal reached the Supreme Court.

In the dissenting opinion for Thorpe v. Housing Authority of the City of Durham, Justice Harlan argued that federal courts should not interfere with local housing authorities' decisions unless there is a clear violation of constitutional or statutory rights. He believed that Mrs. Thorpe's eviction did not violate her due process rights because she was given notice and an opportunity to present her case before being evicted from public housing. Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority's decision to apply new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulations retroactively, arguing that this unfairly penalized local housing authorities for actions taken in good faith under existing rules at the time. In his view, HUD had no intention for its guidelines to be used as grounds for litigation against state agencies in federal court.