Guinn v. United States

Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that found certain grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voting rights to be unconstitutional. Though these grandfather clauses were superficially race neutral, they were designed to protect the voting rights of illiterate white voters while disenfranchising black voters.

Guinn v. United States
Argued October 17, 1913
Decided June 21, 1915
Full case nameFrank Guinn and J. J. Beal v. United States
Citations238 U.S. 347 (more)
35 S. Ct. 926; 59 L. Ed. 1340; 1915 U.S. LEXIS 1572
Case history
PriorCertificate from the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
Holding
A state statute drafted in such a way as to serve no rational purpose other than to disadvantage the right of African-American citizens to vote violated the 15th Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Edward D. White
Associate Justices
Joseph McKenna · Oliver W. Holmes Jr.
William R. Day · Charles E. Hughes
Willis Van Devanter · Joseph R. Lamar
Mahlon Pitney · James C. McReynolds
Case opinion
MajorityWhite, joined by McKenna, Holmes, Day, Hughes, Van Devanter, Lamar, Pitney
McReynolds took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XV

The 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution barred each state from denying the right to vote on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In response, several Southern states, including Oklahoma, established constitutional provisions designed to effectively disenfranchise African-American voters without explicitly violating the Fifteenth Amendment. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White held that Oklahoma's grandfather clause was "repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment and therefore null and void." The decision had little immediate impact, as Southern legislatures found other methods to disenfranchise blacks.

Background

When Oklahoma 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 to the United States Constitution. 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 or serving as soldiers 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 blacks who might have descended from families free before the Civil War could not get an exemption from literacy tests. In practice these were highly subjective, administered by white registrars who discriminated against black voters. Oklahoma's amendment followed those of numerous Southern states that had similar grandfather clauses 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 disenfranchishing black voters, in violation of the 15th Amendment and in violation of Oklahoma State Law.

Fifteenth Amendment

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides the right to not be discriminated against while voting on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude. It does not explicitly allow the right to vote, but instead provides a safeguard against disenfranchisement of legal adults on the basis of their skin color, race, or previous status as a slave from 1871 until now. For example, any southern state that did not remove the qualification of “white” to become a voter still must allow other nonwhite citizens to vote. The amendment voids any clauses in laws or statutes that prohibit voter franchise because of race, so taking the qualification of “white” is merely symbolic, since any nonwhite adult male must be not be denied the right to vote anyway. As a result of the 15th Amendment, clauses such as the Grandfather Clause in the Constitution of Oklahoma would be voided of all racial discrimination if they were dependent upon the year 1871. Since they looked at relatives prior to 1866, however, there was technically a loophole that allowed discrimination.[1]

History of grandfather clauses

The term “grandfathered in” has an inherently racist history. Grandfather clauses were used to allow whites to vote while disenfranchising black people who wanted to vote. The grandfather clause in Guinn v. U.S. involved literacy tests, and other states used poll taxes and constitutional quizzes to bar black access to voting. Since many poor illiterate whites in the South would lose their voting rights as well with these literacy tests and poll taxes, grandfather clauses were introduced. These clauses allowed poor, illiterate whites to register to vote if they had been able to vote before 1867 or if their ancestors could have voted then. This created loopholes around the 15th Amendment, since they could not legally bar people from registering to vote simply because they were not white. The laws had time limits, which were used to try and get as many white voters registered as possible before the laws were challenged in court. Since then, the term “grandfather” has been deracialized since we do not associate it with the inherently racist clauses from the past[2]

Case

The case was argued before the Court on October 17, 1913. It represented the second appearance before the Court of John W. Davis as United States Solicitor General and the first case in which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a brief. The NAACP was increasingly active in such court challenges, eventually founding the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund to support this work. After the case was argued and eventually appealed, the Supreme Court ruled that the Grandfather Clause of the Constitution of Oklahoma was created and intended to exclude as many illiterate black people as possible and include as many illiterate whites as possible. The number of black citizens allowed to vote under the clause approximately equals the number of white citizens barred from voting. This is undoubtedly proof of discrimination and differences in classifying whites and blacks into two classes of illiterates. Therefore, the entire amendment regarding illiteracy in voters is wholly unconstitutional, violating the 15th Amendment. The Clause was implemented as a way to try and avoid violating the 15th Amendment while still disenfranchising black voters. The previous conditions of servitude based on the race or skin color of people rendered them incapable of gaining literacy or meeting the ambiguously formed loopholes within said Clause. Therefore, the Court upheld the prior conviction against Guinn and Beal.[3]

Decision

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Guinn v. United States together with Myers v. Anderson, which concerned a grandfather clause in the Maryland constitution.[4] 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."[5] In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White held that the grandfather clause was clearly designed to interfere with the voting rights protections of the Fifteenth Amendment even though it was racially neutral on it face.[4]

Opinions

Justice Edward White wrote the majority opinion, writing that the Oklahoma law brings race-based discrimination “"into existence since it is based purely on a period of time before the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment and makes that period the controlling and dominant test of the right of suffrage.” There were no dissenting opinions from the Supreme Court justices, which speaks to the strength of the case and how inherently discriminatory this law was.

Aftermath

Even though Guinn v. United States seemed to be a major step for black voters in the South, it conveyed a false sense of victory. Oklahoma immediately implemented a new voting statute which restricted voter registration, stating that "[a]ll 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." After Guinn in Oklahoma, similar constitutional clauses were struck down in former slave states in the South like Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia, but just like Oklahoma, these states found other ways to disenfranchise black voters.

After 23 years, the Supreme Court struck down the new Oklahoma statute in Lane v. Wilson. The Court ruled that the new statute still violated the Fifteenth Amendment because they were "operated unfairly against the very class on whose behalf the protection of the Constitution was here successfully invoked." Guinn successfully paved the way for judicial intervention regarding voter discrimination and disenfranchisement of specific groups, although it did not immediately provide enfranchisement of black voters in the South, as was expected.[6][7]

See also

References
  1. https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv
  2. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/21/239081586/the-racial-history-of-the-grandfather-clause
  3. http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep238/usrep238347/usrep238347.pdf
  4. Shoemaker, Rebecca S. (2004). The White Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy. ABC-CLIO. pp. 142–144. ISBN 9781576079737.
  5. Franklin, Moss p.353
  6. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/guinn-v-united-states-1915/
  7. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/307/268/

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/21/239081586/the-racial-history-of-the-grandfather-clause Library of Congress] 

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