Guinn+v.+United+States

=Guinn v. United States= 238 U.S. 347 (1915)

This case considered a "grandfather clause" employed in the Oklahoma voting qualification scheme.

Oklahoma required that any person who wished to vote first pass a literacy test, requiring reading and writing a section of the state's constitution. However, any person who was "entitled to vote under any form of government" or who was the resident of some foreign nation, as of January 1, 1866, was exempted from the literacy test, as were all of such person's lineal descendants.

In effect, because January 1, 1866 was before slaves gained suffrage, this "grandfather clause" effectively meant that the literacy test applied only to African Americans. Other than the effect of this provision, the law contained no language of outright discrimination against blacks.

The plaintiffs challenged the "grandfather clause" under the Fifteenth Amendment arguing that that provision "if not an express, is certainly an open repudiation of the Fifteenth Amendment" because of its effect on the voting rights of blacks.

The Court held that without question, the clause violated the Fifteenth Amendment. If the Amendment is subject to evasion based merely on the form of the legislature's expression, with no eye to the legislation's effect, the Amendment is powerless.

However, the Court also held that the literacy test itself was a proper exercise of state power:

"No time need be spent on the question of the validity of the literacy test considered alone since as we have seen its establishment was but the exercise of the State of a lawful power vested in it not subject to our supervision, and indeed, its validity is admitted."