Guinn v. United States
Encyclopedia
Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (1915), was an important United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 decision that dealt with provisions of state constitutions that set qualifications for voters. It found grandfather clause
Grandfather clause
Grandfather clause is a legal term used to describe a situation in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future situations. It is often used as a verb: to grandfather means to grant such an exemption...

 exemptions to literacy tests to be unconstitutional. The Oklahoma Constitution, while appearing to treat all voters equally, allowed an exemption to the literacy requirement for those voters whose grandfathers had either been eligible to vote prior to January 1, 1866 or were then a resident of "some foreign nation", or were soldiers. It was an exemption that favored white voters while it disfranchised black voters, most of whose grandfathers had been slaves and therefore unable to vote before 1866.

"In 1915, in the case of Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court declared the grandfather clauses in the Maryland and Oklahoma constitutions to be repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment and therefore null and void." This also affected similar provisions in the constitutions of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia. While the grandfather clause was ruled unconstitutional, state legislatures worked to develop other means of restricting voter registration. It took years for cases challenging those laws to reach the Supreme Court.

Background

When Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

 was admitted to the Union in 1907, it had adopted a constitution which allowed men of all races to vote, in compliance with the Fifteenth Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"...

 to the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

. However, legislators soon passed an amendment to the Constitution that required voters to satisfy a literacy test. A potential voter could be exempted from the literacy requirement if he could prove either that his grandfathers had been voters or had been citizens of some foreign nation, or had served as soldiers before 1866. As a result, illiterate whites were able to vote — but not illiterate blacks, whose grandfathers had almost all been slaves and therefore barred from voting before 1866. Most states that had permitted free people of color to vote in early decades of the 19th century had rescinded that right before 1840. Thus, even African Americans who might have descended from free families could not get an exemption to literacy tests, which in practice were highly subjective, with registrars who discriminated against black voters. Oklahoma's amendment followed those of numerous Southern states that had similar grandfather clause
Grandfather clause
Grandfather clause is a legal term used to describe a situation in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future situations. It is often used as a verb: to grandfather means to grant such an exemption...

s in their constitutions.

The Oklahoma amendment provided:
"No person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election held herein, unless he be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma; but no person who was, on January 1, 1866, or any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Constitution. Precinct election inspectors having in charge the registration of electors shall enforce the provisions of this section at the time of registration, provided registration be required. Should registration be dispensed with, the provisions of this section shall be enforced by the precinct election officers when electors apply for ballots to vote."


The amendment came into force before the election of November 8, 1910 was held. During that election, certain election officers refused to allow black citizens to vote; those officers were indicted and convicted of fraudulently disfranchishing black voters, in violation of the 15th Amendment and in violation of Oklahoma State Law.

The Case

Argued before the Court on October 17, 1913. The case represented the second appearance before the Court of Solicitor General
United States Solicitor General
The United States Solicitor General is the person appointed to represent the federal government of the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States. The current Solicitor General, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 6, 2011 and sworn in on June...

 John W. Davis
John W. Davis
John William Davis was an American politician, diplomat and lawyer. He served as a United States Representative from West Virginia , then as Solicitor General of the United States and US Ambassador to the UK under President Woodrow Wilson...

 and the first case in which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...

 (NAACP) filed a brief.

The Decision

In its decision handed down on June 21, 1915, the Court ruled "the grandfather clauses in the Maryland and Oklahoma constitutions to be repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment and therefore null and void." This also affected similar provisions in the constitutions of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia.

The aftermath

The decision had little short-term effect in Oklahoma. Although the grandfather clause was struck down as unconstitutional, the state legislature immediately passed a new statute restricting voter registration. It provided that "all persons, except those who voted in 1914, who were qualified to vote in 1916 but who failed to register between April 30 and May 11, 1916, with some exceptions for sick and absent persons who were given an additional brief period to register, would be perpetually disenfranchised."

Because of the Supreme Court decision in 1915, similar grandfather clause provisions in the constitutions of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia were struck down as unconstitutional. In most of those states, legislators also quickly devised other statutory approaches to limit black voter registration and voting.

Twenty-three years later, the Supreme Court struck down the statute which Oklahoma had passed to replace the grandfather clause in Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268 ( 1939). The Court concluded that "the means chosen as substitutes for the invalidated 'grandfather clause' were themselves invalid under the Fifteenth Amendment. They operated unfairly against the very class on whose behalf the protection of the Constitution was here successfully invoked."

See also


External links

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