September 2018 LSAT Section 1 Question 5

In the second paragraph, the author asks the question, "...where, then, was the state action that is necessary for in...

mb159701 on August 8, 2020

Why not A?

After reading the explanation in a previous chain, I am still not sure why the answer is B instead of A. Is it because of the phrase “conceptual incoherence”?

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shunhe on August 11, 2020

Hi @mb159701,

Thanks for the question! So we’re being asked here about the second paragraph’s question concerning where the state action necessary for invoking the Fourteenth Amendment was, given that the restrictive covenants were private contracts in lines 19-22. Well, we can go to those lines, reading above and below to make sure we understand the full context of the quotation. Now, (A) tells us this quotation is to demonstrate the conceptual incoherence of a distinction employed by the Shelley Court. However, what would this distinction be? Does the passage talk about a distinction employed by the Shelley Court? Sure, the author points out a distinction, but the Shelley Court doesn’t really make one. And so what makes (A) wrong isn’t just the “conceptual incoherence,” it’s the fact that it attributes a distinction to the Shelley Court, when none is mentioned in the passage.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.