Lane+v.+Wilson

=Lane v. Wilson= 307 U.S. 268 (1939)

After //Guinn v. United States// invalidated Oklahoma's law imposing a literacy test but effectively exempting whites from the test through a "grandfather clause," Oklahoma quickly passed a new law. Under this new law, anyone who voted in the 1914 general election remained a qualified voter. Any other unregistered voter, otherwise qualified, could register to vote only during a twelve-day period, with an extension given to those out of the country and those who were prevented from registering during the twelve-day window "by sickness or unavoidable misfortune." Any voter who was eligible to register to vote during the twelve-day period in 1916, but failed to do so, was permanently barred from registration to vote.

This new statute was challenged on Fifteenth Amendment grounds as a deprivation of the right to vote based on race.

The Court was willing to read the Fifteenth Amendment broadly enough to find a constitutional violation:

"The [Fifteenth] Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination. It hits onerous procedural requirements which effectively handicap exercise of the franchise by the colored race although the abstract right to vote may remain unrestricted as to race. . . . We are compelled to conclude, however reluctantly, that the legislation of 1916 partakes too much of the infirmity of the 'grandfather clause' to be able to survive."

Unfair discrimination was perpetuated by allowing a "free pass" to those who were exempted from the literacy test by the "grandfather clause."

"The practical effect of the 1916 legislation was to accord to the members of the negro race who had been discriminated against in the outlawed registration system of 1914, not more than 12 days within which to reassert constitutional rights which this Court found in the //Guinn// case to have been improperly taken from them. We believe that the opportunity thus given negro voters to free themselves from the effects of discrimination to which they should never have been subjugated was too cabined and confined."

Part of the justification for the Court's decision rested on its view of African American society at the time: "It must be remembered that we are dealing with a body of citizens lacking the habits and traditions of political independence and otherwise living in circumstances which do not encourage initiative and enterprise."

Though the law was facially neutral, it was still discriminatory in intent and effect and it violated the Fifteenth Amendment.