Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966)

Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966)

383 U.S. 663

The State of Virginia imposed an annual poll tax of $1.50 on all residents over the age of twenty-one; payment of the tax was a precondition for voting in state elections. Proceeds from the tax were used to support local government activities, including education. A suit by Harper and others to have the poll tax declared unconstitutional was dismissed by a three-judge federal district court on the basis of Breedlove v. Suttles (1937), in which the Court had unanimously rejected an equal-protection attack on Georgia’s poll tax. Harper appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Opinion of the Court: Douglas, Warren, Clark, Brennan, White, Fortas.

Dissenting opinions: Black; Harlan, Stewart.

JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

We conclude that a State violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth nor to paying or not paying this or any other tax. Our cases demonstrate that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment restrains the States from fixing voter qualifications which invidiously discriminate….

Long ago in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) … the Court referred to “the political franchise of voting” as a “fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights.” Recently in Reynolds v. Sims(1964), … we said, “Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized.” There we were considering charges that voters in one part of the State had greater representation per person in the State Legislature than voters in another part of the State. We concluded: “A citizen, a qualified voter, is no more nor no less so because he lives in the city or on the farm.” We say the same whether the citizen, otherwise qualified to vote, has $1.50 in his pocket or nothing at all, pays the fee or fails to pay it. The principle that denies the State the right to dilute a citizen’s vote on account of his economic status or other such factors by analogy bars a system which excludes those unable to pay a fee to vote or who fail to pay.

It is argued that a State may exact fees from citizens for many different kind of licenses; that if it can demand from all an equal fee for a driver’s license, it can demand from all an equal poll tax for voting. But we must remember that the interest of the State, when it comes to voting, is limited to the power to fix qualifications. Wealth, like race, creed, or color, is not germane to one’s ability to participate intelligently in the electoral process. Lines drawn on the basis of wealth or property, like those of race … are traditionally disfavored…. To introduce wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter’s qualifications is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor. The degree of the discrimination is irrelevant. In this context—that is, as a condition of obtaining a ballot—the requirement of fee paying causes an “invidious” discrimination … that runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause. Levy “by the poll,” as stated in Breedlove v. Suttles … is an old familiar form of taxation; and we say nothing to impair its validity so long as it is not made a condition to the exercise of the franchise. Breedlove v. Suttles sanctioned its use as “a prerequisite of voting.” … To that extent the Breedlove case is overruled….

In a recent searching re-examination of the Equal Protection Clause, we held, as already noted, that “the opportunity for equal participation by all voters in the election of state legislators” is required…. We decline to qualify that principle by sustaining this poll tax. Our conclusion, like that in Reynolds v. Sims, is founded not on what we think governmental policy should be, but on what the Equal Protection Clause requires.

We have long been mindful that where fundamental rights and liberties are asserted under the Equal Protection Clause, classifications which might invade or restrain them must be closely scrutinized and carefully confined….

Those principles apply here. For to repeat, wealth or fee paying has, in our view, no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned.

Reversed.

JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting.

In Breedlove v. Suttles … decided December 6, 1937, a few weeks after I took my seat as a member of this Court, we unanimously upheld the right of the State of Georgia to make payment of its state poll tax a prerequisite to voting in state elections. We rejected at that time contentions that the state law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it put an unequal burden on different groups of people according to their age, sex, and ability to pay…. Later, May 28, 1951, I joined the Court’s judgment in Butler v. Thompson … upholding, over the dissent of Mr. Justice Douglas, the Virginia state poll tax law challenged here against the same equal protection challenges. Since the Breedlove and Butler cases were decided the Federal Constitution has not been amended in the only way it could constitutionally have been, that is, as provided in Article V of the Constitution. I would adhere to the holding of those cases. The Court, however, overrules Breedlove in part, but its opinion reveals that it does so not by using its limited power to interpret the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, but by giving that clause a new meaning which it believes represents a better governmental policy. From this action I dissent.

It should be pointed out at once that the Court’s decision is to no extent based on a finding that the Virginia law as written or as applied is being used as a device or mechanism to deny Negro citizens of Virginia the right to vote on account of their color….

… In view of the purpose of the terms to restrain the courts from a wholesale invalidation of state laws under the Equal Protection Clause it would be difficult to say that the poll tax requirement is “irrational” or “arbitrary” or works “invidious discriminations.” State poll tax legislation can “reasonably,” “rationally” and without an “invidious” or evil purpose to injure anyone be found to rest on a number of state policies including (1) the State’s desire to collect its revenue, and (2) its belief that voters who pay a poll tax will be interested in furthering the State’s welfare when they vote….

The Court’s failure to give any reasons to show that these purposes of the poll tax are “irrational,” “unreasonable,” “arbitrary,” or “invidious” is a pretty clear indication to me that none exist. I can only conclude that the primary, controlling, predominant, if not the exclusive reason for declaring the Virginia law unconstitutional is the Court’s deep-seated hostility and antagonism, which I share, to making payment of a tax a prerequisite to voting….

… For us to undertake in the guise of constitutional interpretation to decide the constitutional policy question of this case amounts, in my judgment, to a plain exercise of power which the Constitution has denied us but has specifically granted to Congress. I cannot join in holding that the Virginia state poll tax law violates the Equal Protection Clause.

JUSTICE HARLAN, with whom JUSTICE STEWART joins, dissenting.

… Is there a rational basis for Virginia’s poll tax as a voting qualification? I think the answer to that question is undoubtedly “yes.”

… It is certainly a rational argument that payment of some minimal poll tax promotes civic responsibility, weeding out those who do not care enough about public affairs to pay $1.50 or thereabouts a year for the exercise of the franchise. It is also arguable, indeed it was probably accepted as sound political theory by a large percentage of Americans through most of our history, that people with some property have a deeper stake in community affairs, and are consequently more responsible, more educated, more knowledgeable, more worthy of confidence, than those without means, and that the community and Nation would be better managed if the franchise were restricted to such citizens. Nondiscriminatory and fairly applied literacy tests … find justification on very similar grounds.

These viewpoints, to be sure, ring hollow on most contemporary ears. Their lack of acceptance today is evidenced by the fact that nearly all of the States, left to their own devices, have eliminated property or poll-tax qualifications; by the cognate fact that Congress and three-quarters of the States quickly ratified the Twenty-Fourth Amendment; and by the fact that rules such as the “pauper exclusion” in Virginia law … have never been enforced.

Property and poll-tax qualifications, very simply, are not in accord with current egalitarian notions of how a modern democracy should be organized. It is of course entirely fitting that legislatures should modify the law to reflect such changes in popular attitudes. However, it is all wrong, in my view, for the Court to adopt the political doctrines popularly accepted at a particular moment of our history and to declare all others to be irrational and invidious, barring them from the range of choice by reasonably minded people acting through the political process. It was not too long ago that Mr. Justice Holmes felt impelled to remind the Court that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not enact the laissez-faire theory of society…. The times have changed, and perhaps it is appropriate to observe that neither does the Equal Protection Clause of that Amendment rigidly impose upon America an ideology of unrestrained egalitarianism.