Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company, 500 U.S. 614 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that peremptory challenges may not be used to exclude jurors on the basis of race in civil trials.

The Court applied the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as determined in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), in finding that such race-based challenges violated the Constitution.

Justice Kennedy began with a long line of cases where the court held that racial discrimination was impermissible in jury selection before a criminal trial.

He then pointed out that although the Court had never indicated such discrimination was permitted in a civil trial, either, it also holds that federal law restrains the actions of government, not private actors.

Kennedy found, almost summarily, that peremptory challenges' intimate role in shaping a jury meant the case met the first part of the test.

The relevant precedent in that consideration was Powers v. Ohio,[6] a similar case that dealt with race-based exclusion of jurors during jury selection in a criminal trial.

Justice O'Connor wrote that "the Court's final argument is that the exercise of a peremptory challenge by a private litigant is state action because it takes place in a courtroom.