Guinn v. United States, ante, p.
238 U. S. 347,
followed as to the effect and operation of the Fifteenth Amendment
and that a state may not establish as a standard for exercising
suffrage a standard existing prior to the adoption of that
Amendment and which was rendered illegal thereby. While the
Fifteenth Amendment does not confer the right of suffrage on any
class, it does prohibit the states from depriving any person of the
right of suffrage whether for federal, state, or municipal
elections.
Page 238 U. S. 369
Election officers who refuse to allow person to exercise their
suffrage because of a state law disqualifying them according to a
standard made unconstitutional by the Fifteenth Amendment are
liable for damages in a civil action under § 1979, Rev.Stat.
Where the standards fixed for voters are several in number, but
are all so interrelated that one cannot be held invalid without
affecting the others, the entire provision must fail.
Where a statute establishing qualifications for exercising
suffrage is unconstitutional, it does not deprive the citizens of
the right to vote, as the previously existing statute is unaffected
by the attempted adoption of one that is void for
unconstitutionality.
The so-called Grandfather Clause in the statute of Maryland of
1908 fixing the qualifications of voters at municipal elections in
the City of Annapolis based on the right of the citizen or his
ancestor to vote at a date prior to the adoption of the Fifteenth
Amendment is unconstitutional because the standards then existing
have been made illegal by the self-operating force of the Fifteenth
Amendment.
182 F. 223 affirmed.
The facts, which involve the constitutionality under the
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, of
the statute of Maryland fixing qualification of voters and
containing what has been known as the Grandfather's Clause, and the
construction and application of § 1979, Rev.Stat., are stated in
the opinion.
Page 238 U. S. 375
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases involve some questions which were not in the
Guinn case,
ante, p.
238 U. S. 347.
The
Page 238 U. S. 376
foundation question, however, is the same -- that is, the
operation and effect of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Prior to the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, the privilege
of suffrage was conferred by the Constitution of Maryland of 1867
upon "every white male citizen," but the Fifteenth Amendment, by
its self-operative force, obliterated the word "white," and caused
the qualification therefore to be "every male citizen," and this
came to be recognized by the Court of Appeals of the State of
Maryland. Without recurring to the establishment of the City of
Annapolis as a municipality in earlier days, or following the
development of its government, it suffices to say that, before
1877, the right to vote for the governing municipal body was vested
in persons entitled to vote for members of the General Assembly of
Maryland, which standard, by the elimination of the word "white"
from the Constitution by the Fifteenth Amendment embraced "every
male citizen." In 1896, a general election law comprising many
sections was enacted in Maryland. Laws of 1896, c. 202, p. 327. It
is sufficient to say that it provided for a board of supervisors of
elections in each county to be appointed by the governor, and that
this board was given the power to appoint two persons as
registering officers and two as judges of election for each
election precinct or ward in the county. Under this law, each ward
or voting precinct in Annapolis became entitled to two registering
officers. While the law made these changes in the election
machinery, it did not change the qualification of voters.
In 1908, an act was passed "to fix the qualifications of voters
at municipal elections in the City of Annapolis and to provide for
the registration of said voters." Laws of 1908, c. 525, p. 347.
This law authorized the appointment of three persons as registers,
instead of two, in each election ward or precinct in Annapolis, and
provided for the mode in which they should perform their duties,
and conferred the right of registration, and consequently the
Page 238 U. S. 377
right to vote, on all male citizens above the age of twenty-one
years who had resided one year in the municipality and had not been
convicted of crime, and who came within any one of the three
following classes:
"1. All taxpayers of the City of Annapolis assessed on the city
books for at least $500. 2. And duly naturalized citizens. 2 1/2.
And male children of naturalized citizens who have reached the age
of twenty-one years. 3. All citizens who, prior to January 1, 1868,
were entitled to vote in the State of Maryland or any other state
of the United States at a state election, and the lawful male
descendants of any person who prior to January 1, 1868, was
entitled to vote in this state or in any other state of the United
States at a state election, and no person not coming within one of
the three enumerated classes shall be registered as a legal voter
of the City of Annapolis or qualified to vote at the municipal
elections held therein, and any person so duly registered shall,
while so registered, be qualified to vote at any municipal election
held in said city; said registration shall in all other respects
conform to the laws of the State of Maryland relating to and
providing for registration in the State of Maryland."
The three persons who are defendants in error in these cases
applied in Annapolis to the board of registration to be registered
as a prerequisite to the enjoyment of their right to vote at an
election to be held in July, 1909, and they were denied the right
by a vote of two out of the three members of the board. They
consequently were unable to vote. Anderson, the defendant in error
in No. 8, was a negro citizen who possessed all the qualifications
required to vote exacted by the law in existence prior to the one
we have just quoted, and who on January 1, 1868, the date fixed in
the third class in the act in question, would have been entitled to
vote in Maryland but for the fact that he was a negro, albeit he
possessed none of the
Page 238 U. S. 378
particular qualifications enumerated by the statute in question.
Howard, the defendant in error in No. 9, was a negro citizen
possessing all the qualifications to vote required before the
passage of the act in question, whose grandfather resided in
Maryland and would have been entitled to vote on January 1, 1868,
but for the fact that he was a negro. Brown, the defendant in error
in No. 10, also had all the qualifications to vote under the law
previously existing, and his father was a negro residing in
Maryland who would have been able to vote on the date named but for
the fact that he was a negro. The three parties thereupon began
these separate suits to recover damages against the two registering
officers who had refused to register them on the ground that
thereby they had been deprived of a right to vote secured by the
Fifteenth Amendment, and that there was liability for damages under
§ 1979, Rev.Stat., which is as follows:
"Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance,
regulation, custom or usage, of any state or territory subjects or
causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other
person within the jurisdiction thereof, to the deprivation of any
rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution and
Laws shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit
in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress."
The complaints were demurred to, and it would seem that every
conceivable question of law susceptible of being raised was
presented and considered, and the demurrers were overruled, the
grounds for so doing being stated in one opinion common to the
three cases (182 F. 223). The cases were then tried to the court
without a jury, and to the judgments in favor of the plaintiffs
which resulted these three separate writs of error were
prosecuted.
The nonliability, in any event, of the election officers for
their official conduct is seriously pressed in argument, and
Page 238 U. S. 379
it is also urged that, in any event, there could not be
liability under the Fifteenth Amendment for having deprived of the
right to vote at a municipal election. But we do not undertake to
review the considerations pressed on these subjects, because we
think they are fully disposed of by the ruling this day made in the
Guinn case and by the very terms of § 2004, Rev.Stat.,
when considered in the light of the inherently operative force of
the Fifteenth Amendment as stated in the case referred to.
This brings us to consider the statute in order to determine
whether its standards for registering and voting are repugnant to
the Fifteenth Amendment. There are three general criteria. We test
them by beginning at the third, as it is obviously the most
comprehensive, and, as we shall ultimately see, the keystone of the
arch upon which all the others rest. In coming to do so it is at
once manifest that, barring some negligible changes in phraseology,
that standard is in all respects identical with the one just
decided in the
Guinn case to be repugnant to the Fifteenth
Amendment, and we pass from its consideration and approach the
first and a subdivision numbered 2 1/2. The first confers the
rights to register and vote free from any distinction on account of
race or color upon all taxpayers assessed for at least $500. We put
all question of the constitutionality of this standard out of view,
as it contains no express discrimination repugnant to the Fifteenth
Amendment, and it is not susceptible of being assailed on account
of an alleged wrongful motive on the part of the lawmaker or the
mere possibilities of its future operation in practice, and
because, as there is a reason other than discrimination on account
of race or color discernible upon which the standard may rest,
there is no room for the conclusion that it must be assumed,
because of the impossibility of finding any other reason for its
enactment, to rest alone upon a purpose to violate the Fifteenth
Amendment. And as, in order to dispose of the case, as
Page 238 U. S. 380
we shall see, it is not necessary to examine the
constitutionality of the other standards, that is, numbers 2 and 2
1/2 relating to naturalized citizens and their descendants, merely
for the sake of argument, we assume those two standards, without so
deciding, to be also free from constitutional objection, and come
to consider the case under that hypothesis.
The result, then, is this: that the third standard is void
because it amounts to a mere denial of the operative effect of the
Fifteenth Amendment, and, based upon that conception, proceeds to
recreate and reestablish a condition which the Amendment prohibits
and the existence of which had been previously stricken down in
consequence of the self-operative force of its prohibitions, and
the other standards separately considered are valid or are assumed
to be such, and therefore are not violative of the Fifteenth
Amendment. On its face, therefore, this situation would establish
that the request made by all the plaintiffs for registration was
rightfully refused, since, even if the void standard be put wholly
out of view, none of the parties had the qualifications necessary
to entitle them to register and vote under any of the others. This
requires us, therefore, to determine whether the two first
standards which we have held were valid or have assumed to be so
must nevertheless be treated as nonexisting as the necessary result
of the elimination of the third standard because of its repugnancy
to the prohibition of the Fifteenth Amendment. And by this we are
brought, therefore, to determine the interrelation of the
provisions and the dependency of the two first, including the
substandard under the second, upon the third; in other words, to
decide whether or not such a unity existed between the standards
that the destruction of one necessarily leaves no possible reason
for recognizing the continued existence and operative force of the
others.
In the
Guinn case, this subject was also passed upon,
and
Page 238 U. S. 381
it was held that, albeit the decision of the question was, in
the very nature of things, a state one, nevertheless, in the
absence of controlling state rulings, it was our duty to pass upon
the subject, and that, in doing so, the overthrow of an illegal
standard would not give rise to the destruction of a legal one
unless such result was compelled by one or both of the following
conditions: (a) where the provision as a whole plainly and
expressly established the dependency of the one standard upon the
other, and therefore rendered it necessary to conclude that both
must disappear as the result of the destruction of either, and (b)
where, even although there was no express ground for reaching the
conclusion just stated, nevertheless that view might result from an
overwhelming implication consequent upon the condition which would
be created by holding that the disappearance of the one did not
prevent the survival of the other -- that is, a condition which
would be so unusual, so extreme, so incongruous as to leave no
possible ground for the conclusion that the death of the one had
not also carried with it the cessation of the life of the
other.
That both of these exceptions here obtain we think is clear:
first, because, looking at the context of the provision, we think
that the obvious purpose was not to subject to the exactions of the
first standard (the property qualification) any person who was
included in the other standards, and second, because the result of
holding that the other standards survived the striking down of the
third would be to bring about such an abnormal result as would
bring the case within the second exception, since it would come to
pass that every American-born citizen would be deprived of his
right to vote unless he was able to comply with the property
qualification, and all naturalized citizens and their descendants
would be entitled to vote without being submitted to any property
qualification whatever. If the clauses as to naturalization
were
Page 238 U. S. 382
assumed to be invalid, the incongruous result just stated would,
of course, not arise, but the legal situation would be unchanged,
since that view would not weaken the conclusion as to the unity of
the provisions of the statute, but, on the contrary, would fortify
it.
But, it is argued, even although this result be conceded, there
nevertheless was no right to recover, and there must be a reversal
since, if the whole statute fell, all the clauses providing for
suffrage fell, and no right to suffrage remained, and hence no
deprivation or abridgment of the right to vote resulted. But this,
in a changed form of statement, advances propositions which we have
held to be unsound in the
Guinn case. The qualification of
voters under the Constitution of Maryland existed and the statute
which previously provided for the registration and election in
Annapolis was unaffected by the void provisions of the statute
which we are considering. The mere change, in some respects, of the
administrative machinery by the new statute did not relieve the new
officers of their duty, nor did it interpose a shield to prevent
the operation upon them of the provisions of the Constitution of
the United States and the statutes passed in pursuance thereof. The
conclusive effect of this view will become apparent when it is
considered that, if the argument were accepted, it would follow
that, although the Fifteenth Amendment by its self-operative force,
without any action of the state, changed the clause in the
Constitution of the State of Maryland conferring suffrage upon
"every white male citizen" so as to cause it to read "every male
citizen," nevertheless the Amendment was so supine, so devoid of
effect, as to leave it open for the legislature to write back by
statute the discriminating provision by a mere changed form of
expression into the laws of the state, and for the state officers
to make the result of such action successfully operative.
There is a contention pressed concerning the application
Page 238 U. S. 383
of the statute upon which the suits were based to the acts in
question. But we think, in view of the nature and character of the
acts, of the self-operative force of the Fifteenth Amendment, and
of the legislation of Congress on the subject, that there is no
ground for such contention.
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS took no part in the consideration and
decision of these cases.