Legal Research on Racial Discrimination -- Voting

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I construction. It is clear,
, that a state statute ex-ying the vote to a par-
on purely racial grounds,

:onstitutional, and no caEe
ch a statute has been con-
the Supreme Court. The
rf the Fifteenth Amend-
always been held to be
rg:,16 so that provisions ol
tutions granting suffrage
males only \['ere auto-

rllified, but the Fifteenth
nullifies "sophisticated ar
ple-minded modes of dis-
"17 and the United Stater
rurt has been concerned
ls which have indirectly
al limitations on voting
as well as nonstatutor.v
ination practiced by polit-

These indirect methods
ation are discussed under
headings in S 4, infra.
to vote secured by the

mendment is fully appli.
:imary elections (S 4[b],
covers elections for local
well as those for national
r United States v Cruik-
) 92 US 542,23 L Ed 58E,

Jtates Supreme Court em-
rt the right to vote in the
r from the states, but the
lmption from discrimina-
rercise of that right comes

v Wilson (1939) 307 US
d 1281, 59 S Ct 872.
v Anderson (1915) 238

L Ed 1349, 35 S Ct 932
offices); Terry v Adamr
us 46r, 97 L Ed tr52,73
'eh den 345 US 1003, 97
73 S Ct 1128; Virginia

I of Elections v Hamm
us r9, 13 L Ed 2d 91, 85
runty offices).
are, of course, subject to

i direct Constitutional Pro'
raps the most important of
rms of insuring the right
lacks is Article I S 4, Per'
yress to regulate the times,
manner oJ holding elec-
:mbers of Congress. See

arbrough (1884) 110 US
I 274, 4 S Ct 152.

preme Court in overturning discrim-
inatory voting practices based on race,
as, for example, in Nixon v Herndon
(1927\ 273 US 536, 71 L Ed 75e, 47
S Ct 446, in u'hich the court stated
that the Fourteenth Amendment pro-
tected "the right of citizens, regard-
less of race or color, to vote."

The Fourteenth Amendment was
early held to be self-executing, in
court decisions following the Civil
War, so that by its or:r'n force it
eliminated the vi,ord "white" from
state constitutions and statutes con-
ferring the right to vote upon "all
white, male citizens of 21" years of
age in the state, thus, by indirection,
conferring the right of suffrage on
black males under state law. So, in
Neal v Delaware (1880) 103 US 370,
26 L Ed 567, it was held that the
legal effect of the adoption of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and the laws
passed for its enforcement, was to
annul so much of existing state law
8s was inconsistent therewith, includ-
ing provisions confining suffrage to
the white race.

The First Amendment coneerns
freedom of speech and "the right of
the people peaceably to assemble."
The freedom of association protected
by that Amendment was also held,
together with the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments, to protect a
citizen's right to cast an effective
vote, in Hadnott v Amos (1969) 894
us 358, 22 L Ed 2d 336, 89 S Ct 1101,
n'here a state election laq' had been
construed to permit the omission from
the ballot of the names of black can-
didates who were no less qualified than

+
State apportionment of voting dis-

tricts to ensure equality of representa-
tioneo was at issue in a recent case in
which racial discrimination in voting
vras asserted to result from the par-
ticular apportionment, but here a
majority of the United States Supreme
Court found nothing in the situation
to show unequal protection of the laws
in terms of discrimination on account
of race in voting.

Whitcomb v Chavis (1921) 408 US
L24,29 L Ed 2d 363, 91 S Ct 858, in_
volved a challenge to state statutes
establishing l\[arion County, Indiana,
as a multimember district for the
election of state senators and rep-
resentatives, and one of the allega-
tions was that the laws invidiouslv
diluted the votes of Negroes and poor
persons Iiving in the "ghetto area,' of
Marion County. A three-judge Dis-
trict Court determined that a racial
minority group with specific legisla-
tive interests inhabited a ghetto area
in Marion County, and that the stat-
utes operated to minimize and cancel
out the voting strength of this minor-
ity group, the court holding that this
group rl'as unconstitutionally under_
represented because the proportion of
legislators tvith residences in the
ghetto elected from 1960 to 1g68 was
less than the ghetto's proportion of
the population, less than the propor-
tion of legislators elected from a
neighboring township r+'hich u,as less
populous, and less than the ghetto

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RACIAL DISCRIMINATION-VOTING 89327L8d2d885 Be
from the urrited States, and that while their u'hite rivals, the United States
the first- has not been granted or Supreme court saying that this consti-
secured -by the constitution of the tuted unequat application of the same
united States, the latter has been. law to different racial groups, for pur-

The Fourteenth Amendment, besides poses of (l) the Fourteenth Amend-
declaring who are citizens of the ment's guaranty of equal protection of
United States and of the states where- the ]aws, (2) the Fifteenth Amend-
in they reside, also forbids the states ment's guaranty of the right of people
to make or enforce any lau'which shall regardless of their color or political
"deny to any person u'ithin its juris- persuasion to cast their votes effective-
diction the equal protection of the ly, and (3) the First Amendment's
laws." This clause, as well as the guaranty of the right to band together
Fifteenth Amendment, has often been for the advancement of political
relied on by the United States Su- beliefs.

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20. As to the basis of apportionment
and the one man-one vo[e rule, see
25 Am Jur 2d, Elections g 16.