# data[].attributes.headline
14th amendment equal protection clause and voting

# data[].attributes.subject
14th amendment equal protection clause and voting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What It Means
United States Library of Congress, The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation
Although, of course, the denial of the franchise on the basis of race or color violates the Fifteenth Amendment and a series of implementing statutes enacted by Congress, ¹ the administration of election statutes so as to treat white and black voters or candidates differently can constitute a denial of equal protection as well. ² Additionally, cases of gerrymandering of electoral districts and the creation or maintenance of electoral practices that dilute and weaken black and other minority voting strength is subject to Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment and statutory attack. ³

The States have long been held to have broad powers to determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised, absent of course the discrimination which the Constitution condemns. ⁴ The Constitution provides that the qualifications of electors in congressional elections are to be determined by reference to the qualifications prescribed in the states for the electors of the most numerous branch of the legislature, and the states are authorized to determine the manner in which presidential electors are selected. ⁵ The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment provides for a proportionate reduction in a state's representation in the House when it denies the franchise to its qualified male citizens ⁶ and specific discriminations on the basis of race, sex, and age are addressed in other Amendments. We do not suggest that any standards which a State desires to adopt may be required of voters. But there is wide scope for exercise of its jurisdiction. Residence requirements, age, previous criminal record are obvious examples indicating factors which a state may take into consideration in determining the qualification of voters. The ability to read and write likewise has some relation to standards designed to promote intelligent use of the ballot. ⁷

The perspective of this 1959 opinion by Justice Douglas has now been revolutionized. 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 rights of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized. ⁸ Any unjustified discrimination in determining who may participate in political affairs or in the selection of public officials undermines the legitimacy of representative government. Statutes granting the franchise to residents on a selective basis always pose the danger of denying some citizens any effective voice in governmental affairs which substantially affect their lives. Therefore, if a challenged state statute grants the right to vote to some bona fide residents of requisite age and citizenship and denies the franchise to others, the Court must determine whether the exclusions are necessary to promote a compelling state interest.

And, for these reasons, the deference usually given to the judgment of legislators does not extend to decisions concerning which resident citizens may participate in the election of legislators and other public officials. When we are reviewing statutes that deny some residents the right to vote, the general presumption of constitutionality afforded state statutes and the traditional approval given state classifications if the Court can conceive of a 'rational basis' for the distinctions made are not applicable. ⁹ Using this analytical approach, the Court has established a regime of close review of a vast range of state restrictions on the eligibility to vote, on access to the ballot by candidates and parties, and on the weighing of votes cast through the devices of apportionment and districting. Changes in Court membership over the years have led to some relaxation in the application of principles, but even as the Court has drawn back in other areas it has tended to preserve, both doctrinally and in fact, the election cases. ¹⁰

Voter Qualifications

States may require residency as a qualification to vote, but durational residence laws are unconstitutional unless the State can demonstrate that such laws are necessary to promote a compelling governmental interest. ¹¹ The Court applies this exacting test because the right to vote is a fundamental political right, preservative of all rights, and because a durational residence requirement directly impinges on the exercise of a second fundamental personal right, the right to travel. ¹² The Court indicated that the states have a legitimate and compelling interest in preventing fraud by voters, but that it is impossible to view durational residence requirements as necessary to achieve that state interest. ¹³

However, a 50-day durational residence requirement was sustained in the context of the closing of the registration process 50 days prior to elections and of the mechanics of the state's registration process. The period, the Court found, was necessary to achieve the state's legitimate goals. ¹⁴

A state that exercised general criminal, taxing, and other jurisdiction over persons on certain federal enclaves within the state, the Court held, could not treat these persons as nonresidents for voting purposes. ¹⁵ A statute that provided that anyone who entered military service outside the state could not establish voting residence in the state so long as he remained in the military was held to deny to such a person the opportunity such as all non-military persons enjoyed of showing that he had established residence. ¹⁶ Restricting the suffrage to those persons who had paid a poll tax was invidious discrimination because it introduced a capricious or irrelevant factor of wealth or ability to pay into an area in which it had no place. ¹⁷ Extending this ruling, the Court held that the eligibility to vote in local school elections may not be limited to persons owning property in the district or who have children in school, ¹⁸ and denied states the right to restrict the vote to property owners in elections on the issuance of revenue bonds ¹⁹ or general obligation bonds. ²⁰ By contrast, the Court upheld a statute that required voters to present government-issued photo identification in order to vote, as the state had not required voters to pay a tax or a fee to obtain new photo identification. The Court added that, although obtaining a government-issued photo identification is an inconvenience to voters, it surely does not qualify as a substantial burden. ²¹

The Court has also held that, because the activities of a water storage district fell so disproportionately on landowners as a group, a limitation of the franchise in elections for the district's board of directors to landowners, whether resident or not and whether natural persons or not, excluding non-landowning residents and lessees of land, and weighing the votes granted according to assessed valuation of land, comported with equal protection standards. ²² Adverting to the reservation in prior local governmental unit election cases ²³ that some functions of such units might be so specialized as to permit deviation from the usual rules, the Court then proceeded to assess the franchise restrictions according to the traditional standards of equal protection rather than by those of strict scrutiny. ²⁴ Also narrowly approached was the issue of the effect of the District's activities, the Court focusing upon the assessments against landowners as the sole means of paying expenses rather than additionally noting the impact upon lessees and non-landowning residents of such functions as flood control. The approach taken in this case seems different to a great degree from that in prior cases and could in the future alter the results in other local government cases. These cases were extended somewhat in Ball v. James, ²⁵ a 5-to-4 decision that sustained a system in which voting eligibility was limited to landowners, and votes were allocated to these voters on the basis of the number of acres they owned. The entity was a water reclamation district that stores and delivers water to 236,000 acres of land in the state and subsidizes its water operations by selling electricity to hundreds of thousands of consumers in a nearby metropolitan area. The entity's board of directors was elected through a system in which the eligibility to vote was as described above. The Court thought the entity was a specialized and limited form to which its general franchise rulings did not apply. ²⁶

Finding that prevention of raiding-the practice whereby voters in sympathy with one party vote in another's primary election in order to distort that election's results-is a legitimate and valid state goal, as one element in the preservation of the integrity of the electoral process, the Court sustained a state law requiring those voters eligible at that time to register to enroll in the party of their choice at least 30 days before the general election in order to be eligible to vote in the party's next primary election, 8 to 11 months hence. The law did not impose a prohibition upon voting but merely imposed a time deadline for enrollment, the Court held, and it was because of the plaintiffs' voluntary failure to register that they did not meet the deadline. ²⁷ But a law that prohibited a person from voting in the primary election of a political party if he had voted in the primary election of any other party within the preceding 23 months was subjected to strict scrutiny and was voided because it constituted a severe restriction upon a voter's right to associate with the party of his choice by requiring him to forgo participation in at least one primary election in order to change parties. ²⁸ A less restrictive closed primary system was also invalidated, the Court finding insufficient justification for a state's preventing a political party from allowing independents to vote in its primary. ²⁹

It must not be forgotten, however, that it is only when a state extends the franchise to some and denies it to others that a right to vote arises and is protected by the Equal Protection Clause. If a state chooses to fill an office by means other than through an election, neither the Equal Protection Clause nor any other constitutional provision prevents it from doing so. Thus, in Rodriguez v. Popular Democratic Party, ³⁰ the Court unanimously sustained a Puerto Rico statute that authorized the political party to which an incumbent legislator belonged to designate his successor in office until the next general election upon his death or resignation. Neither the fact that the seat was filled by appointment nor the fact that the appointment was by the party, rather than by the governor or some other official, raised a constitutional question.

The right of unconvicted jail inmates and convicted misdemeanants (who typically are under no disability) to vote by absentee ballot remains unsettled. In an early case applying rational basis scrutiny, the Court held that the failure of a state to provide for absentee balloting by unconvicted jail inmates, when absentee ballots were available to other classes of voters, did not deny equal protection when it was not shown that the inmates could not vote in any other way. ³¹ Subsequently, the Court held unconstitutional a statute denying absentee registration and voting rights to persons confined awaiting trial or serving misdemeanor sentences, but it is unclear whether the basis was the fact that persons confined in jails outside the county of their residences could register and vote absentee while those confined in the counties of their residences could not, or whether the statute's jumbled distinctions among categories of qualified voters on no rational standard made it wholly arbitrary. ³²

Access to the Ballot

The Equal Protection Clause applies to state specification of qualifications for elective and appointive office. Although one may have no right to be elected or appointed to an office, all persons do have a federal constitutional right to be considered for public service without the burden of invidiously discriminatory disqualification. The State may not deny to some the privilege of holding public office that it extends to others on the basis of distinctions that violate federal constitutional guarantees. ³³ In Bullock v. Carter, ³⁴ the Court used a somewhat modified form of the strict test in passing upon a filing fee system for primary election candidates that imposed the cost of the election wholly on the candidates and that made no alternative provision for candidates unable to pay the fees; the reason for application of the standard, however, was that the fee system deprived some classes of voters of the opportunity to vote for certain candidates and it worked its classifications along lines of wealth. The system itself was voided because it was not reasonably connected with the state's interest in regulating the ballot and did not serve that interest and because the cost of the election could be met out of the state treasury, thus avoiding the discrimination. ³⁵

Recognizing the state interest in maintaining a ballot of reasonable length in order to promote rational voter choice, the Court observed nonetheless that filing fees alone do not test the genuineness of a candidacy or the extent of voter support for an aspirant. Therefore, effectuation of the legitimate state interest must be achieved by means that do not unfairly or unnecessarily burden the party's or the candidate's important interest in the continued availability of political opportunity. The interests involved are not merely those of parties or individual candidates; the voters can assert their preferences only through candidates or parties or both and it is this broad interest that must be weighed in the balance. The process of qualifying candidates for a place on the ballot may not constitutionally be measured solely in dollars. ³⁶ In the absence of reasonable alternative means of ballot access, the Court held, a state may not disqualify an indigent candidate unable to pay filing fees. ³⁷

In Clements v. Fashing, ³⁸ the Court sustained two provisions of state law, one that barred certain officeholders from seeking election to the legislature during the term of office for which they had been elected or appointed, but that did not reach other officeholders whose terms of office expired with the legislators' terms and did not bar legislators from seeking other offices during their terms, and the other that automatically terminated the terms of certain officeholders who announced for election to other offices, but that did not apply to other officeholders who could run for another office while continuing to serve. The Court was splintered in such a way, however, that it is not possible to derive a principle from the decision applicable to other fact situations.

In Williams v. Rhodes, ³⁹ a complex statutory structure that had the effect of keeping off the ballot all but the candidates of the two major parties was struck down under the strict test because it deprived the voters of the opportunity of voting for independent and third-party candidates and because it seriously impeded the exercise of the right to associate for political purposes. Similarly, a requirement that an independent candidate for office in order to obtain a ballot position must obtain 25,000 signatures, including 200 signatures from each of at least 50 of the state's 102 counties, was held to discriminate against the political rights of the inhabitants of the most populous counties, when it was shown that 93.4% of the registered voters lived in the 49 most populous counties. ⁴⁰ But to provide that the candidates of any political organization obtaining 20% or more of the vote in the last gubernatorial or presidential election may obtain a ballot position simply by winning the party's primary election, while requiring candidates of other parties or independent candidates to obtain the signatures of less than five percent of those eligible to vote at the last election for the office sought, is not to discriminate unlawfully, because the state placed no barriers of any sort in the way of obtaining signatures and because write-in votes were also freely permitted. ⁴¹

Reviewing under the strict test the requirements for qualification of new parties and independent candidates for ballot positions, the Court recognized as valid objectives and compelling interests the protection of the integrity of the nominating and electing process, the promotion of party stability, and the assurance of a modicum of order in regulating the size of the ballot by requiring a showing of some degree of support for independents and new parties before they can get on the ballot. ⁴² [T]o comply with the First and Fourteenth Amendments the State must provide a feasible opportunity for new political organizations and their candidates to appear on the ballot. ⁴³ Decision whether or not a state statutory structure affords a feasible opportunity is a matter of degree, very much a matter of 'consider[ing] the facts and circumstances behind the law, the interest which the State claims to be protecting, and the interest of those who are disadvantaged by the classification.' ⁴⁴

Thus, in order to assure that parties seeking ballot space command a significant, measurable quantum of community support, Texas was upheld in treating different parties in ways rationally constructed to achieve this objective. Candidates of parties whose gubernatorial choice polled more than 200,000 votes in the last general election had to be nominated by primary elections and went on the ballot automatically, because the prior vote adequately demonstrated support. Candidates whose parties polled less than 200,000 but more than 2 percent could be nominated in primary elections or in conventions. Candidates of parties not coming within either of the first two categories had to be nominated in conventions and could obtain ballot space only if the notarized list of participants at the conventions totaled at least one percent of the total votes cast for governor in the last preceding general election or, failing this, if in the 55 succeeding days a requisite number of qualified voters signed petitions to bring the total up to one percent of the gubernatorial vote. [W]hat is demanded may not be so excessive or impractical as to be in reality a mere device to always, or almost always, exclude parties with significant support from the ballot, but the Court thought that one percent, or 22,000 signatures in 1972, falls within the outer boundaries of support the State may require. ⁴⁵ Similarly, independent candidates can be required to obtain a certain number of signatures as a condition to obtain ballot space. ⁴⁶ A state may validly require that each voter participate only once in each year's nominating process and it may therefore disqualify any person who votes in a primary election from signing nominating or supporting petitions for independent parties or candidates. ⁴⁷ Equally valid is a state requirement that a candidate for elective office, as an independent or in a regular party, must not have been affiliated with a political party, or with one other than the one of which he seeks its nomination, within one year prior to the primary election at which nominations for the general election are made. ⁴⁸ So too, a state may limit access to the general election ballot to candidates who received at least 1% of the primary votes cast for the particular office. ⁴⁹ But it is impermissible to print the names of the candidates of the two major parties only on the absentee ballots, leaving off independents and other parties. ⁵⁰ Also invalidated was a requirement that independent candidates for President and Vice-President file nominating petitions by March 20 in order to qualify for the November ballot. ⁵¹

Related Resources:

Footnotes

1. See Federal Remedial Legislation, infra.

2. E.g., Hadnott v. Amos, 394 U.S. 358 (1971); Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985) (disenfranchisement for crimes involving moral turpitude adopted for purpose of racial discrimination).

3. E.g., Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960); United Jewish Orgs. v. Carey, 430 U.S. 144 (1977); Rogers v. Lodge, 458 U.S. 613 (1982).

4. Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Elections, 360 U.S. 45, 50-51 (1959).

5. Article I, § 2, cl. 1 (House of Representatives); Seventeenth Amendment (Senators); Article II, § 1, cl. 2 (presidential electors); Article I, § 4, cl. 1 (times, places, and manner of holding elections).

6. Fourteenth Amendment, § 2. Justice Harlan argued that the inclusion of this provision impliedly permitted the states to discriminate with only the prescribed penalty in consequence and that therefore the equal protection clause was wholly inapplicable to state election laws. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 589 (1964) (dissenting); Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 97 (1965) (dissenting); Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 152 (1970) (concurring and dissenting). Justice Brennan undertook a rebuttal of this position in Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. at 229, 250 (concurring and dissenting). But see Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24 (1974), where § 2 was relevant in precluding an equal protection challenge.

7. Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Elections, 360 U.S. 45, 51 (1959).

8. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 561-62 (1964).

9. Kramer v. Union Free School Dist., 395 U.S. 621, 626-28 (1969). See also Hill v. Stone, 421 U.S. 289, 297 (1975). But cf. Holt Civic Club v. City of Tuscaloosa, 439 U.S. 60 (1978).

10. Thus, in San Antonio School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 34-35 nn.74 & 78 (1973), a major doctrinal effort to curb the fundamental interest side of the new equal protection, the Court acknowledged that the right to vote did not come within its prescription that rights to be deemed fundamental must be explicitly or implicitly guaranteed in the Constitution. Nonetheless, citizens have a constitutionally protected right to participate in elections, which is protected by the Equal Protection Clause. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 336 (1972). The franchise is the guardian of all other rights. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 562 (1964).

11. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 342 (1972) (internal quotation marks omitted, emphasis added by the Court) (striking down a Tennessee statute that imposed a requirement of one year in the state and three months in the county). The Court did not indicate what, if any, shorter duration it would permit, although it noted that, in the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, 84 Stat. 316, 42 U.S.C. § 1973aa-1, Congress outlawed State durational residence requirements for presidential and vice-presidential elections, and prohibited the States from closing registration more than 30 days before Congress prescribed a thirty-day period for purposes of voting in presidential elections. Id. at 344. Note also that it does not matter whether one travels interstate or intrastate. Hadnott v. Amos, 320 F. Supp. 107 (M.D. Ala. 1970), aff'd, 405 U.S. 1035 (1972).

12. 405 U.S. at 336, 338. See also Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 2 (2006) (per curiam) (vacating an injunction against requiring voters to present proof of citizenship when they register to vote and to present identification when they vote on election day, but expressing no opinion on the constitutionality of the requirement).

13. 405 U.S. at 345. Other asserted state interests - knowledgeability of voters, common interests, intelligent voting-were said either not to be served by the requirements or to be impermissible interests.

14. Marston v. Lewis, 410 U.S. 679 (1973). Registration was by volunteer workers who made statistically significant errors requiring corrections by county recorders before certification. Primary elections were held in the fall, thus occupying the time of the recorders, so that a backlog of registrations had to be processed before the election. A period of 50 days rather than 30, the Court thought, was justifiable. However, the same period was upheld for another state on the authority of Marston in the absence of such justification, but it appeared that the plaintiffs had not controverted the state's justifying evidence. Burns v. Fortson, 410 U.S. 686 (1973). Justices Brennan, Douglas, and Marshall dissented in both cases. Id. at 682, 688.

15. Evans v. Cornman, 398 U.S. 419 (1970).

16. Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89 (1965).

17. Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966). Justices Black, Harlan, and Stewart dissented. Id. at 670, 680. Poll tax qualifications had previously been upheld in Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937); and Butler v. Thompson, 341 U.S. 937 (1951).

18. Kramer v. Union Free School Dist., 395 U.S. 621 (1969). The Court assumed without deciding that the franchise in some circumstances could be limited to those primarily interested or primarily affected by the outcome, but found that the restriction permitted some persons with no interest to vote and disqualified others with an interest. Justices Stewart, Black, and Harlan dissented. Id. at 594.

19. Cipriano v. City of Houma, 395 U.S. 701 (1969). Justices Black, Harlan, and Stewart concurred specially. Id. at 707.

20. City of Phoenix v. Kolodziejski, 399 U.S. 204 (1970). Justice Stewart and Chief Justice Burger dissented. Id. at 215. In Hill v. Stone, 421 U.S. 289 (1975), the Court struck down a limitation on the right to vote on a general obligation bond issue to persons who have rendered or listed real, mixed, or personal property for taxation in the election district. It was not a special interest election since a general obligation bond issue is a matter of general interest.

21. Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 128 S. Ct. 1610, 1621 (2008) (plurality). See Fourteenth Amendment, Voting and Ballot Access, infra.

22. Salyer Land Co. v. Tulare Water Storage Dist., 410 U.S. 719 (1973). See also Associated Enterprises v. Toltec Watershed Improv. Dist., 410 U.S. 743 (1973) (limitation of franchise to property owners in the creation and maintenance of district upheld). Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall dissented in both cases. Id. at 735, 745.

23. 410 U.S. at 727-28.

24. 410 U.S. at 730, 732. Thus, the Court posited reasons that might have moved the legislature to adopt the exclusions.

25. 451 U.S. 355 (1981).

26. The water district cases were distinguished in Quinn v. Millsap, 491 U.S. 95, 109 (1989), the Court holding that a board of freeholders appointed to recommend a reorganization of local government had a mandate far more encompassing than land use issues, as its recommendations affect[ ] all citizens regardless of land ownership.

27. Rosario v. Rockefeller, 410 U.S. 752 (1973). Justices Powell, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall dissented. Id. at 763.

28. Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51 (1973). Justices Blackmun and Rehnquist dissented. Id. at 61, 65.

29. Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut, 479 U.S. 208 (1986). Although independents were allowed to register in a party on the day before a primary, the state's justifications for protect[ing] the integrity of the Party against the Party itself were deemed insubstantial. Id. at 224.

30. 457 U.S. 1 (1982). See also Fortson v. Morris, 385 U.S. 231 (1966) (legislature could select governor from two candidates having highest number of votes cast when no candidate received majority); Sailors v. Board of Elections, 387 U.S. 105 (1967) (appointment rather than election of county school board); Valenti v. Rockefeller, 292 F. Supp. 851 (S.D.N.Y. 1968) (three-judge court), aff'd, 393 U.S. 405 (1969) (gubernatorial appointment to fill United States Senate vacancy).

31. McDonald v. Board of Election Comm'rs, 394 U.S. 802 (1969). But see Goosby v. Osser, 409 U.S. 512 (1973) (McDonald does not preclude challenge to absolute prohibition on voting).

32. O'Brien v. Skinner, 414 U.S. 524 (1974). See American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 794-95 (1974).

33. Turner v. Fouche, 396 U.S. 346, 362-63 (1970) (voiding a property qualification for appointment to local school board). See also Chappelle v. Greater Baton Rouge Airport Dist., 431 U.S. 159 (1977) (voiding a qualification for appointment as airport commissioner of ownership of real or personal property that is assessed for taxes in the jurisdiction in which airport is located); Quinn v. Millsap, 491 U.S. 95 (1989) (voiding property ownership requirement for appointment to board authorized to propose reorganization of local government). Cf. Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1 (1944).

34. 405 U.S. 134, 142-44 (1972).

35. 405 U.S. at 144-49.

36. Lubin v. Panish, 415 U.S. 709, 716 (1974).

37. Concurring, Justices Blackmun and Rehnquist suggested that a reasonable alternative would be to permit indigents to seek write-in votes without paying a filing fee, 415 U.S. at 722, but the Court indicated this would be inadequate. Id. at 719 n.5.

38. 457 U.S. 957 (1982). A plurality of four contended that save in two circumstances-ballot access classifications based on wealth and ballot access classifications imposing burdens on new or small political parties or independent candidates-limitations on candidate access to the ballot merit only traditional rational basis scrutiny, because candidacy is not a fundamental right. The plurality found both classifications met the standard. Id. at 962-73 (Justices Rehnquist, Powell, O'Connor, and Chief Justice Burger). Justice Stevens concurred, rejecting the plurality's standard, but finding that inasmuch as the disparate treatment was based solely on the state's classification of the different offices involved, and not on the characteristics of the persons who occupy them or seek them, the action did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Id. at 973. The dissent primarily focused on the First Amendment but asserted that the classifications failed even a rational basis test. Id. at 976 (Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun).

39. 393 U.S. 23 (1968). [T]he totality of the Ohio restrictive laws taken as a whole imposes a burden on voting and associational rights which we hold is an invidious discrimination, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Id. at 34. Justices Douglas and Harlan would have relied solely on the First Amendment, id. at 35, 41, and Justices Stewart and White and Chief Justice Warren dissented. Id. at 48, 61, 63.

40. Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814 (1969) (overruling MacDougall v. Green, 335 U.S. 281 (1948)).

41. Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U.S. 431 (1971).

42. Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724 (1974); American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767 (1974); Illinois State Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173 (1979). See also Indiana Communist Party v. Whitcomb, 414 U.S. 441 (1974) (impermissible to condition ballot access upon a political party's willingness to subscribe to oath that party does not advocate the overthrow of local, state or national government by force or violence, opinion of Court based on First Amendment, four Justices concurring on equal protection grounds).

43. Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 746 (1974).

44. 415 U.S. at 730 (quoting Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 30 (1968)).

45. American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 783 (1974). In Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 738-40 (1974), the Court remanded so that the district court could determine whether the burden imposed on an independent party was too severe, it being required in 24 days in 1972 to gather 325,000 signatures from a pool of qualified voters who had not voted in that year's partisan primary elections. See also Illinois State Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173 (1979) (voiding provision that required a larger number of signatures to get on ballot in subdivisions than statewide).

46. American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 788-91 (1974). The percentages varied with the office but no more than 500 signatures were needed in any event.

47.415 U.S. at 785-87.

48. Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 728-37 (1974). Dissenting, Justices Brennan, Douglas and Marshall thought the state interest could be adequately served by a shorter time period than a year before the primary election, which meant in effect 17 months before the general election. Id. at 755.

49. Munro v. Socialist Workers Party, 479 U.S. 189 (1986).

50. American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 794-95 (1974). Upheld, however, was state financing of the primary election expenses that excluded convention expenses of the small parties. Id. at 791-94. But the major parties had to hold conventions simultaneously with the primary elections the cost of which they had to bear. For consideration of similar contentions in the context of federal financing of presidential elections, see Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 93-97 (1976).

51. Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983). State interests in assuring voter education, treating all candidates equally (candidates participating in a party primary also had to declare candidacy in March), and preserving political stability, were deemed insufficient to justify the substantial impediment to independent candidates and their supporters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Fourteenth Amendment Protects Voting Rights - FindLaw

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Fourteenth Amendment contains the Equal Protection clause, a landmark part of the foundation for why all citizens are guaranteed due process and equal treatment under the laws of the land. Since voting is considered to be one of the country's most essential freedoms, legal complications can arise when some individuals' right to vote is called into question.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Voting Rights for African Americans | The Right to Vote | Elections | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A terrible and bloody Civil War freed enslaved Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1868) subsequently granted African Americans the rights of citizenship. Sadly, this did not always translate into the right to vote. Even after Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment providing the right to vote, it would be many years before African Americans would be allowed to fully participate in the process.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Before the Voting Rights Act

Reconstruction and the Civil War Amendments

Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed. At that time, although a few northern states permitted a small number of free black men to register and vote, slavery and restrictive state laws and practices led the franchise to be exercised almost exclusively by white males.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War Congress enacted the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, which allowed former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union if they adopted new state constitutions that permitted universal male suffrage. The 14th Amendment, which conferred citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, was ratified in 1868.

In 1870 the 15th Amendment was ratified, which provided specifically that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude. This superseded state laws that had directly prohibited black voting. Congress then enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870, which contained criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote, and the Force Act of 1871, which provided for federal election oversight.

As a result, in the former Confederate States, where new black citizens in some cases comprised outright or near majorities of the eligible voting population, hundreds of thousands -- perhaps one million -- recently-freed slaves registered to vote. Black candidates began for the first time to be elected to state, local and federal offices and to play a meaningful role in their governments.

Disfranchisement

The extension of the franchise to black citizens was strongly resisted. Among others, the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and other terrorist organizations attempted to prevent the 15th Amendment from being enforced by violence and intimidation. Two decisions in 1876 by the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of enforcement under the Enforcement Act and the Force Act, and, together with the end of Reconstruction marked by the removal of federal troops after the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, resulted in a climate in which violence could be used to depress black voter turnout and fraud could be used to undo the effect of lawfully cast votes.

Once whites regained control of the state legislatures using these tactics, a process known as "Redemption," they used gerrymandering of election districts to further reduce black voting strength and minimize the number of black elected officials. In the 1890s, these states began to amend their constitutions and to enact a series of laws intended to re-establish and entrench white political supremacy.

Such disfranchising laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of "good character," and disqualification for "crimes of moral turpitude." These laws were "color-blind" on their face, but were designed to exclude black citizens disproportionately by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures selectively. Other laws and practices, such as the "white primary,", attempted to evade the 15th Amendment by allowing "private" political parties to conduct elections and establish qualifications for their members.

As a result of these efforts, in the former Confederate states nearly all black citizens were disenfranchised and removed from by 1910. The process of restoring the rights taken stolen by these tactics would take many decades.

Attacks on Disfranchisement Before the Voting Rights Act

In Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), the Supreme Court held that voter registration requirements containing "grandfather clauses,", which made voter registration in part dependent upon whether the applicant was descended from men enfranchised before enactment of the 15th Amendment violated that amendment. The Supreme Court found the Oklahoma law was adopted in order to give whites, who might otherwise have been disfranchised by the state's literacy test, a way of qualifying to vote that was not available to blacks. In 1944, the Supreme Court held that the Texas "white primary" violated the 15th Amendment. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944). The Southern states experimented with numerous additional restrictions to limit black participation in politics, many of which were struck down by federal courts over the next decade.

Congress passed legislation in 1957, 1960, and 1964 that contained voting-related provisions. The 1957 Act created the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice and the Commission on Civil Rights; the Attorney General was given authority to intervene in and institute lawsuits seeking injunctive relief against violations of the 15th Amendment. The 1960 Act permitted federal courts to appoint voting referees to conduct voter registration following a judicial finding of voting discrimination. The 1964 Act also contained several relatively minor voting-related provisions. Although court decisions and these laws made it more difficult, at least in theory, for states to keep all of their black citizens disenfranchised, the strategy of litigation on a case-by-case basis proved to be of very limited success in the jurisdictions were sued and it did not prompt voluntary compliance among jurisdictions that had not been sued. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other formal and informal practices combined to keep black registration rates minimal in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and well below white registration rates in the others.

Faced with the prospect that black voter registration could not be suppressed forever, however, some states began to change political boundaries and election structures so as to minimize the impact of black re-enfranchisement. In 1960, the Supreme Court struck down one such effort, in which the state legislature had gerrymandered the city boundaries of Tuskegee, Alabama, so as to remove all but a handful of the city's black registered voters. The Supreme Court ruled that by doing so Alabama had violated the 15th Amendment. Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960).

The "Reapportionment Revolution"

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court also overcame its reluctance to apply the Constitution to unfair redistricting practices. Prior to 1962, the United States Supreme Court had declined to decide constitutional challenges to legislative apportionment schemes, on the grounds that such "political questions" were not within the federal courts' jurisdiction. In Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), however, the Supreme Court recognized that grossly malapportioned state legislative districts could seriously undervalue -- or dilute -- the voting strength of the residents of overpopulated districts while overvaluing the voting strength of residents of underpopulated districts. The Supreme Court found that such malapportionment could be challenged in federal court under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

In later cases including G ray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963), Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), and Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), the Supreme Court established the one-person, one-vote principle. Because in many states malapportioned legislative districts had resulted in sparsely-populated rural counties having a much greater share of their state's political power than their state's population, correcting this imbalance led to dramatic realignments of political power in several states. In Fortson v. Dorsey, 379 U.S. 433 (1965), the Supreme Court suggested, but did not hold, that certain types of apportionment might unconstitutionally dilute the voting strength of racial minorities.

>

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Introduction To Federal Voting Rights Laws

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Reconstruction and the Civil War Amendments Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The right of a citizen to vote is not directly protected in the Constitution, and throughout our history that right has often been granted to some, but denied to others. However, through various amendments to the Constitution, the right to vote has become more and more inclusive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The right of a citizen to vote is not directly protected in the Constitution, and throughout our history that right has often been granted to some, but denied to others. However, through various amendments to the Constitution, the right to vote has become more and more inclusive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast

Take a glance at the checkered map above, and it's clear that many states have moved in opposite directions in enacting new voting measures this year.

Those changes - which come after the pandemic upended election administration in 2020, a year that witnessed record turnout - have fallen mostly along partisan lines, with Republican-led states like Arizona passing new restrictive voting laws, while Democratic states such as Illinois have increased voters' ballot access.

The classifications on the map are from the Voting Rights Lab, which advocates for expanded voting access. The group determined whether each state's new provisions cumulatively expand or restrict access, or have a mixed outcome for voters.

"What we are witnessing in real time across the country is a widening divide," the lab said in a June report, "whereby some states are working to strengthen and expand participation in our democracy just as a significant number of states work to curtail it."

Dozens of states have enacted more than 200 new laws related to elections and voting, according to the organization.

Following former President Donald Trump's baseless fraud claims and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, GOP-led states that have curtailed ballot access or made changes to election administration - like Arizona, Florida and Georgia - have drawn most of the attention from federal lawmakers, voting advocates and the courts. Texas has just added its name to the list.

But overall the Voting Rights Lab says more states have passed into law measures that expand access.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans have blocked Democratic attempts to pass sweeping federal legislation that would set new election standards nationwide.

Below is a list of the states that the Voting Rights Lab says have passed laws that either mostly restrict or expand access.

Keep in mind: Some places, like Nevada, which will now send ballots to all eligible voters, have enacted significant changes; other state reforms are more modest.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Map: See Which States Have Restricted Voter Access, And Which States Have Expanded It

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast Take a glance at the checkered map above, and it's clear that many states have moved in opposite directions in enacting new voting measures this year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On November 8, 2016, Alaska voters approved Ballot Measure 1 (15PFVR) which will automatically register eligible individuals to vote when they apply for a Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), unless they opt-out. The Division of Elections webpage has more information.

A mailer from the Division of Elections will be sent to Alaskans who applied for their PFD from January 1st through March 31st of the PFD filing season and whose address on their PFD application is different than their voter record address, or to applicants who are not currently registered to vote.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On November 8, 2016, Alaska voters approved Ballot Measure 1 (15PFVR) which will automatically register eligible individuals to vote when they apply for a Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), unless they opt-out. The Division of Elections webpage has more information.

# data[].attributes.headline
Equal Protection Clause and the constitution

# data[].attributes.subject
Equal Protection Clause and the constitution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At the core of the debate on the Equal Protection Clause's application to race is the question of symmetry. Some people oppose race-conscious measures designed to address racial discrimination and inequality. For example, some individuals oppose efforts by schools and employers to consider race with the goal of enrolling or hiring more minority applicants. In arguing that these measures violate the Fourteenth Amendment, opponents equate such efforts with invidious discrimination rooted in belief in racial inferiority and superiority.

In 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court found that race-conscious measures designed to address the effects of discrimination were as presumptively unconstitutional as was discrimination rooted in racial antipathy and the belief in racial inferiority. The Court further recognized what it called "societal discrimination", i.e., a category of discrimination, however lamentable, for which no one was responsible and for which there is no remedy. Before Bakke, racial equality efforts had been justified based on a general imperative to overcome the lasting effects of historic racial discrimination and subordination. Bakke and subsequent cases effectively limited this remedial justification imperative to individual cases of proven discrimination. It threw the remedial rationale under the bus, leaving vast manifestations of racial inequality beyond the reach of law.

Still, Justice Powell proffered an alternative ground for race-conscious admissions by colleges and universities. His opinion in Bakke recognizing "diversity" as a compelling governmental interest bridged a divided Court. It rested diversity in universities' First Amendment-based interest in academic freedom, rather than in the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection-based interest of African Americans and other people of color in educational opportunity at institutions from which they had long been excluded. In spite of the Fourteenth Amendment's original purposes-and notwithstanding continued racial inequality in higher education-a majority of the Bakke Court held that the Amendment had no special meaning for African Americans.

In the years following Bakke, students of color were admitted to selective colleges and universities in modest numbers, even if Bakke's viability was under continued criticism and attack in social discourse as well as in the courts. In 2003, Grutter v. Bollinger upheld a race-conscious admissions program at a public law school. The Grutter majority garnered 5 votes for Powell's diversity rationale, mooting a long running argument that it had never commanded five votes. Still, as diversity opponents have sensed that the Court has become more conservative, they have refused to accept what should be settled law and have instead continued to bring challenges to Bakke/ Grutter. Anti-diversity advocates are no doubt encouraged by the Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, which invalidated voluntary, and by their nature, race-conscious, public school desegregation efforts in Seattle and in Louisville.

There is no question that the Fourteenth Amendment, by its own terms, applies to all people. Still, there is great irony in the fact that many of the effects of systemic and intergenerational racial discrimination, especially as visited upon African Americans, remain intact, even in "The Age of Obama." The Court has placed them beyond the reach of law. There is further irony in the fact that long after the Court has abandoned Brown 's imperative, even voluntary desegregation efforts have been found to constitute racial discrimination.

At a Harvard Law School symposium some years ago commemorating the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), I struggled to articulate the duality of the Fourteenth Amendment: its original purpose and imperative was undeniably directed at remedying discrimination against African Americans. And yet the Amendment was meant to protect all from unequal treatment under the law. One purpose does not negate the other. As Judge Guido Calabresi put it on that occasion, there are two Fourteenth Amendments: the Fourteenth Amendment for all, and the Fourteenth Amendment that holds the Thirteenth Amendment inside of it. That is not to say that the Thirteenth Amendment does not apply to all; it bans slavery and involuntary servitude from existing anywhere within the United States. But that part of the Thirteenth Amendment that aimed to wipe away the badges and incidents of slavery had significance for one people. The Equal Protection Clause's duality is evidenced by the fact that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment adopted all manners of race-conscious measures specifically for black Americans: the Freedman's Bureau, schools, hospitals, banks, and land. The notion that mere race-consciousness, whatever its intent, was inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment is unsupported by history.

Lest we think that these facts have no contemporary significance, it bears remembrance that legalized subordination of African Americans did not end with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, or even in 1868 with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was a continuum which only began to end with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Era legislation and jurisprudence of the 1960s. Bakke 's assault on the remedial imperative began a mere ten years after the beginning of the end of the subordination continuum. Even today, since the involuntary arrival of African Americans began in what is now the United States, nine out of every ten of their days have been spent in slavery and Jim Crow segregation, as have eight of every ten days since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Jurisprudence and discourse that disembodies present day racial inequality from our history of legally imposed racial subordination is either tone deaf to history or intellectually dishonest, as is the notion that there is moral or legal symmetry between efforts to address the effects of that history, on the one hand, and invidious discrimination, on the other. The Fourteenth Amendment continues to call to us. Even while it has other, no less important, work to do, it its original work is unfinished.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the core of the debate on the Equal Protection Clause's application to race is the question of symmetry. Some people oppose race-conscious measures designed to address racial discrimination and inequality. For example, some individuals oppose efforts by schools and employers to consider race with the goal of enrolling or hiring more minority applicants.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
equal protection, in United States law, the constitutional guarantee that no person or group will be denied the protection under the law that is enjoyed by similar persons or groups. In other words, persons similarly situated must be similarly treated. Equal protection is extended when the rules of law are applied equally in all like cases and when persons are exempt from obligations greater than those imposed upon others in like circumstances. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, one of three amendments adopted in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War (1861-65), prohibits states from denying to any person "the equal protection of the laws."

For much of the post-Civil War period, the Supreme Court held that the postwar amendments had but one purpose: to guarantee "the freedom of the slave race...and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited domination over him." Thus, the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was applied minimally-except in some cases of racial discrimination, such as the invalidation of literacy tests and grandfather clauses for voting. In other decisions-such as v. Ferguson (1896), which sanctioned racial segregation, and the decisions creating the doctrine of state action, which limited the enforcement of national civil rights legislation-the court diminished the envisioned protections. Indeed, for nearly 80 years after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the intent of the equal protection clause was effectively circumvented. As late as 1927, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., referred to equal protection as "the usual last resort of constitutional arguments." Not until the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision did the court reverse its decision in Plessy and declare racial segregation unconstitutional.

Under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s, the concept of equal protection was dramatically transformed and applied to cases involving welfare benefits, exclusionary zoning, municipal services, and school financing. Equal protection became a prolific source of constitutional litigation. During the tenure of Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, the court added considerably to the list of situations that might be adjudicated under the doctrine of equal protection, including sexual discrimination, the status and rights of aliens, voting, abortion, and access to the courts. In v. Gore (2000), which stemmed from the controversial presidential election of that year, the Supreme Court's ruling that a selective recount of ballots in the state of Florida violated the equal protection clause helped to preserve George W. Bush's narrow win in that state and in the electoral college.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
equal protection, in United States law, the constitutional guarantee that no person or group will be denied the protection under the law that is enjoyed by similar persons or groups. In other words, persons similarly situated must be similarly treated.

# data[].attributes.headline
Equal protection clause levels of scrutiny - judicial review

# data[].attributes.subject
Equal protection clause levels of scrutiny - judicial review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Introduction

Legislation frequently involves making classifications that either advantage or disadvantage one group of persons, but not another. States allow 20-year-olds to drive, but don't let 12-year-olds drive. Indigent single parents receive government financial aid that is denied to millionaires. Obviously, the Equal Protection Clause cannot mean that government is obligated to treat all persons exactly the same--only, at most, that it is obligated to treat people the same if they are "similarly circumstanced."

Over recent decades, the Supreme Court has developed a three-tiered approach to analysis under the Equal Protection Clause.

Most classifications, as the Railway Express andKotch cases illustrate, are subject only to rational basis review.Railway Express upholds a New York City ordinance prohibiting advertising on commercial vehicles--unless the advertisement concerns the vehicle owner's own business. The ordinance, aimed at reducing distractions to drivers, was underinclusive (it applied to some, but not all, distracting vehicles), but the Court said the classification was rationally related to a legitimate end.Kotch was a tougher case, with the Court voting 5 to 4 to uphold a Louisiana law that effectively prevented anyone but friends and relatives of existing riverboat pilots from becoming a pilot. The Court suggested that Louisiana's system might serve the legitimate purpose of promoting "morale andesprit de corps" on the river. The Court continues to apply an extremely lax standard to most legislative classifications. In Federal Communications Commission v Beach (1993), the Court went so far as to say that economic regulations satisfy the equal protection requirement if "there is any conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification." Justice Stevens, concurring, objected to the Court's test, arguing that it is "tantamount to no review at all."
Classifications involving suspect classifications such as race, however, are subject to closer scrutiny. A rationale for this closer scrutiny was suggested by the Court in a famous footnote in the 1938 case of Carolene Products v. United States (see box at left). Usually, strict scrutiny will result in invalidation of the challenged classification--but not always, as illustrated byKorematsu v. United States, in which the Court upholds a military exclusion order directed at Japanese-Americans during World War II.Loving v Virginia produces a more typical result when racial classifications are involved: a unanimous Supreme Court strikes down Virginia's miscegenation law.

For more on the Loving case, here is a link to a trailer for HBO's 2012 documentary on the case: http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/the-loving-story/promo-trailer

The Court also applies strict scrutiny to classifications burdening certain fundamental rights. Skinner v Oklahoma considers an Oklahoma law requiring the sterilization of persons convicted of three or more felonies involving moral turpitude ("three strikes and you're snipped"). In Justice Douglas's opinion invalidating the law we see the origins of the higher-tier analysis that the Court applies to rights of a "fundamental nature" such as marriage and procreation.Skinner thus casts doubt on the continuing validity of the oft-quoted dictum of Justice Holmes in a 1927 case (Buck v Bell) considering the forced sterilization of certain mental incompetents: "Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

The Court applies a middle-tier scrutiny (a standard that tends to produce less predictable results than strict scrutiny or rational basis scrutiny) to gender and illegitimacy classifications. Separate pages on this website deal with these issues.

Levels of Scrutiny Under the Three-Tiered Approach to Equal Protection Analysis
1. STRICT SCRUTINY (The government must show that the challenged classification serves a compelling state interest and that the classification is necessary to serve that interest.):
A. Suspect Classifications:
1. Race
2. National Origin
3. Religion (either under EP or Establishment Clause analysis)
4. Alienage (unless the classification falls within a recognized "political community" exception, in which case only rational basis scrutiny will be applied).
B. Classifications Burdening Fundamental Rights
1. Denial or Dilution of the Vote
2. Interstate Migration
3. Access to the Courts
4. Other Rights Recognized as Fundamental
2. MIDDLE-TIER SCRUTINY (The government must show that the challenged classification serves an important state interest and that the classification is at least substantially related to serving that interest.):
Quasi-Suspect Classifications:
1. Gender
2. Illegitimacy
3. MINIMUM (OR RATIONAL BASIS) SCRUTINY (The govenment need only show that the challenged classification is rationally related to serving a legitimate state interest.)
Minimum scrutiny applies to all classifications other than those listed above, although some Supreme Court cases suggest a slightly closer scrutiny ("a second-order rational basis test") involving some weighing of the state's interest may be applied in cases, for example, involving classifications that disadvantage mentally retarded people, homosexuals, or innocent children of illegal aliens. (See "Should the Rational Basis Test Have Bite?")

Do Equal Protection Principles Apply to the Federal Government?

Note that the Fourteenth Amendment reads "No STATE shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Is the federal government thus free to discriminate? Is it possible that women could be denied positions in the Labor Department because of their sex or that West Point could refuse to admit Hispanics? The answer, which is not obvious as a constitutional matter, was provided in Bolling v Sharpe (1954), in which the Court found segregation in the public schools of Washington, D.C. violated the Constitution. Chief Justice Warren wrote:

"The Fifth Amendment, which is applicable in the District of Columbia, does not contain an equal protection clause as does the Fourteenth Amendment which applies only to the states. But the concepts of equal protection and due process, both stemming from our American ideal of fairness, are not mutually exclusive. The "equal protection of the laws" is a more explicit safeguard of prohibited unfairness than "due process of law," and, therefore, we do not imply that the two are always interchangeable phrases. But, as this Court has recognized, discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process."

Bolling (and its so-called "reverse incorporation") seems to leave open the possibility that the Federal Government will be given, in some cases, more flexibility than the states to draw legislative classifications. Some commentators have argued, for example, that the Federal Government should be free to adopt aggressive affirmative actions measures that states would be prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment from adopting. Do you agree?

2. Identify as many legitimate reasons as you can for the classification involved in 4. What level of scrutiny do you believe would be appropriate in the 5. 6. Is

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

No State shall...deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Cases
Railway Express v. New York (1949)
Kotch v. Bd. of River Port Pilot Commissioners (1947)
Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942)
Korematsu v. United States (1944)
Loving v. Virginia (1967)

Sign at World War II Relocation Center in California.

Fred Korematsu
"H ere is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign."--Justice Robert Jackson, dissenting, in Korematsu v United States.

THE STORY BEHIND KOREMATSU v UNITED STATES

The Footnote
Footnote 4 of Carolene Products v. United States is often described as "the most famous footnote in constitutional law." The footnote, which appears in a case applying a presumption of constitutionality and applying minimal scutiny to an economic regulation, offered reasons for applying more exacting scrutiny in certain other types of cases:

n4 There may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality when legislation appears on its face to be within a specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of the first ten amendments, which are deemed equally specific when held to be embraced within the Fourteenth.

It is unnecessary to consider now whether legislation which restricts those political processes which can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of undesirable legislation, is to be subjected to more exacting judicial scrutiny under the general prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment than are most other types of legislation.
Nor need we enquire whether similar considerations enter into the review of statutes directed at particular religious, or national, or racial minorities: whether prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry.

Mildred and Richard Loving, who successfully challenged Virginia's miscegenation law. (UPI)
Questions
1. Which type of classifications are more likely to present a serious equal protection issue: overinclusive classifications or underinclusive classifications? Why?
Railway Express.
3. In identifying a justification for a challenged classification, should the Court consider (1) actual purposes for the classification, (2) all justifications now proffered by the state, or (3) all justifications proffered by the state plus those that the Court can dream up on its own?

Kotch case? Could you argue that the classification burdened a fundamental right to pursue own's chosen profession? Does the fact that one's ability to become a Louisiana riverboat captain turns on blood connections justify more than rational basis scrutiny?
Korematsu is the only Supreme Court decision purporting to apply strict scrutiny that results in a challenged classification disadvantaging a racial minority being upheld. How do you account for the outcome of this case?
Skinner better analyzed as an equal protection case or a substantive due process case? What about Loving? 7. Can you hypothesize a situation today in which a classification disadvantaging a racial minority might be upheld?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Levels of Scrutiny Under the Equal Protection Clause

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Introduction Legislation frequently involves making classifications that either advantage or disadvantage one group of persons, but not another. States allow 20-year-olds to drive, but don't let 12-year-olds drive. Indigent single parents receive government financial aid that is denied to millionaires.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What It Means
United States Library of Congress, The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation
Of critical importance in equal protection litigation is the degree to which the government is permitted to take race or another suspect classification into account when formulating and implementing a remedy to overcome the effects of past discrimination. Often the issue is framed in terms of reverse discrimination, in that the governmental action deliberately favors members of one class and consequently may adversely affect nonmembers of that class. ¹ Although the Court had previously accepted the use of suspect criteria such as race to formulate remedies for specific instances of past discrimination ² and had allowed preferences for members of certain non-suspect classes that had been the object of societal discrimination, ³ it was not until the late 1970s that the Court gave plenary review to programs that expressly used race as the primary consideration for awarding a public benefit. ⁴

In United Jewish Organizations v. Carey, ⁵ New York State had drawn a plan that consciously used racial criteria to create districts with nonwhite populations in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act and to obtain the United States Attorney General's approval for a redistricting law. These districts were drawn large enough to permit the election of nonwhite candidates in spite of the lower voter turnout of nonwhite citizens. In the process, a Hasidic Jewish community previously located entirely within one senate and one assembly district were divided between two senate and two assembly districts, and members of that community sued, alleging that the value of their votes had been diluted solely for the purpose of achieving a racial quota. The Supreme Court approved the districting, although the fragmented majority of seven concurred in no majority opinion. ⁶

Justice White, delivering the judgment of the Court, based the result on alternative grounds. First, because the redistricting took place pursuant to the administration of the Voting Rights Act, Justice White argued that compliance with the Act necessarily required states to be race-conscious in the drawing of lines so as not to dilute minority voting strength. Justice White noted that this requirement was not dependent upon a showing of past discrimination and that the states retained discretion to determine just what strength minority voters needed in electoral districts in order to assure their proportional representation. Moreover, the creation of a certain number of districts in which minorities were in the majority was reasonable under the circumstances. ⁷

Second, Justice White wrote that irrespective of what the Voting Rights Act may have required, what the state had done did not violate either the Fourteenth or the Fifteenth Amendment. This was so because the plan, even though it used race in a purposeful manner, represented no racial slur or stigma with respect to white citizens or any other race; the plan did not operate to minimize or unfairly cancel out white voting strength, because as a class white citizens would be represented in the legislature in accordance with their proportion of the population in the jurisdiction. ⁸

It was anticipated that Regents of the University of California v. Bakke ⁹ would shed further light on the constitutionality of affirmative action. Instead, the Court again fragmented. In Bakke, the Davis campus medical school admitted 100 students each year. Of these slots, the school set aside 16 of those seats for disadvantaged minority students, who were qualified but not necessarily as qualified as those winning admission to the other 84 places. Twice denied admission, Bakke sued, arguing that had the 16 positions not been set aside he could have been admitted. The state court ordered him admitted and ordered the school not to consider race in admissions. By two 5-to-4 votes, the Supreme Court affirmed the order admitting Bakke but set aside the order forbidding the consideration of race in admissions. ¹⁰

Four Justices, in an opinion by Justice Brennan, argued that racial classifications designed to further remedial purposes were not foreclosed by the Constitution under appropriate circumstances. Even ostensibly benign racial classifications, however, could be misused and produce stigmatizing effects; therefore, they must be searchingly scrutinized by courts to ferret out these instances. But benign racial preferences, unlike invidious discriminations, need not be subjected to strict scrutiny; instead, intermediate scrutiny would do. As applied, then, this review would enable the Court to strike down a remedial racial classification that stigmatized a group, that singled out those least well represented in the political process to bear the brunt of the program, or that was not justified by an important and articulated purpose. ¹¹

Justice Powell, however, argued that all racial classifications are suspect and require strict scrutiny. Because none of the justifications asserted by the college met this high standard of review, he would have invalidated the program. But he did perceive justifications for a less rigid consideration of race as one factor among many in an admissions program; diversity of student body was an important and protected interest of an academy and would justify an admissions set of standards that made affirmative use of race. Ameliorating the effects of past discrimination would justify the remedial use of race, the Justice thought, when the entity itself had been found by appropriate authority to have discriminated, but the college could not inflict harm upon other groups in order to remedy past societal discrimination. ¹² Justice Powell thus agreed that Bakke should be admitted, but he joined the four justices who sought to allow the college to consider race to some degree in its admissions. ¹³

The Court then began a circuitous route toward disfavoring affirmative action, at least when it occurs outside the education context. At first, the Court seemed inclined to extend the result in Bakke. In Fullilove v. Klutznick, ¹⁴ the Court, still lacking a majority opinion, upheld a federal statute requiring that at least ten percent of public works funds be set aside for minority business enterprises. A series of opinions by six Justices all recognized that alleviation and remediation of past societal discrimination was a legitimate goal and that race was a permissible classification to use in remedying the present effects of past discrimination.

Chief Justice Burger issued the judgment, which emphasized Congress's preeminent role under the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment to determine the existence of past discrimination and its continuing effects and to implement remedies that were race-conscious in order to cure those effects. The principal concurring opinion by Justice Marshall applied the Brennan analysis in Bakke, using middle-tier scrutiny to hold that the race-conscious set-aside was substantially related to the achievement of the important and congressionally articulated goal of remedying the present effects of past discrimination. ¹⁵

Taken together, the opinions established that, although Congress had the power to make the findings that will establish the necessity to use racial classifications in an affirmative way, these findings need not be extensive nor express and may be collected in many ways. 16 Moreover, although the opinions emphasized the limited duration and magnitude of the set-aside program, they appeared to attach no constitutional significance to these limitations, thus leaving open the way for programs of a scope sufficient to remedy all the identified effects of past discrimination. ¹⁷

But the most important part of these opinions rested in the clear sustaining of race classifications as permissible in remedies and in the approving of some forms of racial quotas.

The Court rejected arguments that minority beneficiaries of such programs are stigmatized, that burdens are placed on innocent third parties, and that the program is overinclusive, so as to benefit some minority members who had suffered no discrimination. ¹⁸

Despite these developments, the Court remained divided in its response to constitutional challenges to affirmative action plans. ¹⁹ As a general matter, the authority to apply racial classifications was found to be at its greatest when Congress was acting pursuant to section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment or other of its remedial powers, or when a court is acting to remedy proven discrimination. But a countervailing consideration was the impact of such discrimination on disadvantaged non-minorities. Two cases illustrate the latter point. In Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, ²⁰ the Court invalidated a provision of a collective bargaining agreement giving minority teachers preferential protection from layoffs. In United States v. Paradise, ²¹ the Court upheld as a remedy for past discrimination a court-ordered racial quota in promotions. Justice White, concurring in Wygant, emphasized the harsh, direct effect of layoffs on affected non-minority employees. ²² By contrast, a plurality of Justices in Paradise viewed the remedy in that case as affecting non-minorities less harshly than did the layoffs in Wygant, because the promotion quota would merely delay promotions of those affected, rather than cause the loss of their jobs. ²³

Current Affirmative Action Doctrines

A clear distinction was then drawn between federal and state power to apply racial classifications. In City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., ²⁴ the Court invalidated a minority set-aside requirement that holders of construction contracts with the city subcontract at least 30% of the dollar amount to minority business enterprises. Applying strict scrutiny, the Court found Richmond's program to be deficient because it was not tied to evidence of past discrimination in the city's construction industry. By contrast, the Court in Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC ²⁵ applied a more lenient standard of review in upholding two racial preference policies used by the FCC in the award of radio and television broadcast licenses. The FCC policies, the Court explained, are benign, race-conscious measures that are substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental objective of broadcast diversity. ²⁶

In Croson, the Court ruled that the city had failed to establish a compelling interest in the racial quota system because it failed to identify past discrimination in its construction industry. The mere recitation of a benign or remedial purpose will not suffice, the Court concluded, nor will reliance on the disparity between the number of contracts awarded to minority firms and the minority population of the city. "[W]here special qualifications are necessary, the relevant statistical pool for purposes of demonstrating exclusion must be the number of minorities qualified to undertake the particular task." ²⁷ The Court also said that because the ordinance defined minority group members to include citizens of the United States who are "Blacks, Spanish-speaking, Orientals, Indians, Eskimos, or Aleuts, this expansive definition impugn[ed] the city's claim of remedial motivation, there having been no evidence of any past discrimination against non-black racial minorities in the Richmond construction industry." ²⁸ It followed that Richmond's set-aside program also was not narrowly tailored to remedy the effects of past discrimination in the city: an individualized waiver procedure made the quota approach unnecessary, and a minority entrepreneur from anywhere in the country could obtain an absolute racial preference. ²⁹

At issue in Metro Broadcasting were two minority preference policies of the FCC, one recognizing an enhancement for minority ownership and participation in management when the FCC considers competing license applications, and the other authorizing a distress sale transfer of a broadcast license to a minority enterprise. These racial preferences - unlike the set-asides at issue in Fullilove-originated as administrative policies rather than statutory mandates. Because Congress later endorsed these policies, however, the Court was able to conclude that they bore the imprimatur of longstanding congressional support and direction. ³⁰

Metro Broadcasting was noteworthy for several other reasons as well. The Court rejected the dissent's argument - seemingly accepted by a Croson majority-that Congress's more extensive authority to adopt racial classifications must trace to section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and instead ruled that Congress also may rely on race-conscious measures in the exercise of its commerce and spending powers. ³¹ This meant that the governmental interest furthered by a race-conscious policy need not be remedial, but could be a less focused interest such as broadcast diversity. Secondly, as noted above, the Court eschewed strict scrutiny analysis: the governmental interest need only be important rather than compelling, and the means adopted need only be substantially related rather than narrowly tailored to the interest.

The distinction between federal and state power to apply racial classifications, however, proved ephemeral. The Court ruled in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena ³² that racial classifications imposed by federal law must be analyzed by the same strict scrutiny standard that is applied to evaluate state and local classifications based on race. The Court overruled Metro Broadcasting and, to the extent that it applied a review standard less stringent than strict scrutiny, Fullilove v. Klutznick. Strict scrutiny is to be applied regardless of the race of those burdened or benefitted by the particular classification; there is no intermediate standard applicable to benign racial classifications. The underlying principle, the Court explained, is that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect persons, not groups. It follows, therefore, that classifications based on the group characteristic of race should be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry to ensure that the personal right to equal protection has not been infringed. ³³

By applying strict scrutiny, the Court was in essence affirming Justice Powell's individual opinion in Bakke, which posited a strict scrutiny analysis of affirmative action. There remained the question, however, whether Justice Powell's suggestion that creating a diverse student body in an educational setting was a compelling governmental interest that would survive strict scrutiny analysis. It engendered some surprise, then, that the Court essentially reaffirmed Justice Powell's line of reasoning in the cases of Grutter v. Bollinger, ³⁴ and Gratz v. Bollinger. ³⁵

In Grutter, the Court considered the admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School, which requires admissions officials to evaluate each applicant based on all the information available in their file ( e.g., grade point average, Law School Admissions Test score, personal statement, recommendations) and on soft variables ( e.g., the strength of recommendations, quality of the undergraduate institution, the difficulty of undergraduate courses). The policy also considered racial and ethnic diversity with special reference to the inclusion of students from groups that have been historically discriminated against, like African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. However, the policy did not limit the seeking of diversity to ethnic and racial classifications, it did seek a critical mass of minorities so that those students would not feel isolated. ³⁶

The Grutter Court found that student diversity provided significant benefits, not just to the students who might have otherwise not been admitted, but also to the student body as a whole. These benefits include cross-racial understanding, the breakdown of racial stereotypes, the improvement of classroom discussion, and the preparation of students to enter a diverse workforce. Further, the Court emphasized the role of education in developing national leaders. Thus, the Court found that such efforts were important to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry. ³⁷As the university did not rely on quotas, but rather relied on flexible assessments of a student's record, the Court found that the university's policy was narrowly tailored to achieve the substantial governmental interest of achieving a diverse student body. ³⁸

The law school's admission policy in Grutter, however, can be contrasted with the university's undergraduate admission policy. In Gratz, the Court evaluated the undergraduate program's selection index, which assigned applicants up to 150 points based on a variety of factors similar to those considered by the law school. Applicants with scores over 100 were generally admitted, while those with scores of less than 100 fell into categories that could result in either admittance, postponement, or rejection. Of particular interest to the Court was that an applicant would be entitled to 20 points based solely upon his or her membership in an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority group. The policy also included the flagging of certain applications for special review, and underrepresented minorities were among those whose applications were flagged. ³⁹

The Court in Gratz struck down this admissions policy, relying again on Justice Powell's decision in Bakke. Although Justice Powell had thought it permissible that race or ethnic background be deemed a 'plus' in a particular applicant's file, ⁴⁰ the system he envisioned involved individualized consideration of all elements of an application to ascertain how the applicant would contribute to the diversity of the student body. According to the majority opinion in Gratz, the undergraduate policy did not provide for such individualized consideration. Instead, by automatically distributing 20 points to every applicant from an underrepresented minority group, the policy effectively admitted every qualified minority applicant. Although it acknowledged that the volume of applications could make individualized assessments an administrative challenge, the Court found that the policy was not narrowly tailored to achieve respondents' asserted compelling interest in diversity. ⁴¹

The Court subsequently revisited the question of affirmative action in undergraduate education in its 2016 decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, upholding the University of Texas at Austin's (UT's) use of scores based, in part, on race in filling approximately 25% of the slots in its incoming class that were not required by statute to be awarded to Texas high school students who finished in the top 10% of their graduating class (Top Ten Percent Plan or TTPP). ⁴² The Court itself suggested that the sui generis nature of the UT program, ⁴³ coupled with the fact that this case has been litigated on a somewhat artificial basis because the record lacked information about the impact of Texas's TTPP, ⁴⁴ may limit the decision's value for prospective guidance. ⁴⁵ Nonetheless, certain language in the Court's decision, along with its application of the three controlling factors set forth in the Court's 2013 decision in Fisher, ⁴⁶ seem likely to have some influence, as they represent the Court's most recent jurisprudence on whether and when institutions of higher education may take race into consideration in their admission decisions. Specifically, the 2016 Fisher decision began and ended with broad language recognizing constraints on the implementation of affirmative action programs in undergraduate education, including language that highlights the university's continuing obligation to satisfy the burden of strict scrutiny in light of changing circumstances ⁴⁷ and emphasized that [t]he Court's affirmance of the University's admissions policy today does not necessarily mean the University may rely on that same policy without refinement. ⁴⁸ Nonetheless, while citing these constraints, the 2016 Fisher decision held that the challenged UT program did not run afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment. In particular, the Court concluded that the state's compelling interest in the case was not in enrolling a certain number of minority students, but in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity, noting that the state cannot be faulted for not specifying a particular level of minority enrollment. ⁴⁹ The Court further concurred with UT's view that the alleged critical mass of minority students achieved under the 10% plan was not dispositive, as the university had found that it was insufficient, ⁵⁰ and that UT had found other means of promoting student-body diversity were unworkable. ⁵¹ In so concluding, the Court held that the university had met its burden in surviving strict scrutiny by providing sworn affidavits from UT officials and internal assessments based on months of studies, retreats, interviews, and reviews of data that amounted, in the view of the Court, to a reasoned, principled explanation of the university's interests and its efforts to achieve those interests in a manner that was no broader than necessary. ⁵² The Court refused to question the motives of university administrators and did not further scrutinize the underlying evidence relied on by the respondents, which may indicate that there are some limits to the degree in which the Court will evaluate a race-conscious admissions policy once the university has provided sufficient support for its approach. ⁵³

While institutions of higher education were striving to increase racial diversity in their student populations, state and local governments were engaged in a similar effort with respect to elementary and secondary schools. Whether this goal could be constitutionally achieved after Grutter and Gratz, however, remained unclear, especially as the type of individualized admission considerations found in higher education are less likely to have useful analogies in the context of public school assignments. Thus, for instance, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, ⁵⁴ the Court rejected plans in both Seattle, Washington, and Jefferson County, Kentucky, that, in order reduce what the Court found to be de facto racial imbalance in the schools, used racial tiebreakers to determine school assignments. ⁵⁵ As in Bakke, numerous opinions by a fractured Court led to an uncertain resolution of the issue.

In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, a majority of the Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools agreed that the plans before the Court did not include the kind of individualized considerations that had been at issue in the university admissions process in Grutter, but rather focused primarily on racial considerations. ⁵⁶ Although a majority of the Court found the plans unconstitutional, only four Justices (including the Chief Justice) concluded that alleviating de facto racial imbalance in elementary and secondary schools could never be a compelling governmental interest. Justice Kennedy, while finding that the school plans at issue were unconstitutional because they were not narrowly tailored, ⁵⁷ suggested in separate concurrence that relieving racial isolation could be a compelling governmental interest. The Justice even envisioned the use of plans based on individual racial classifications as a last resort if other means failed. ⁵⁸ As Justice Kennedy's concurrence appears to represent a narrower basis for the judgment of the Court than does Justice Roberts' opinion, it appears to represent, for the moment, the controlling opinion for the lower courts. ⁵⁹

Laws that Benefit Women

Cases of statutory classifications that benefit women and disadvantage men in order to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination against women have presented the Court with some difficulty. Although the first two cases were reviewed under apparently traditional rational basis scrutiny, the more recent cases appear to subject these classifications to the same intermediate standard as any other sex classification. Kahn v. Shevin ⁶⁰ upheld a state property tax exemption allowing widows but not widowers a $500 exemption. In justification, the state had presented extensive statistical data showing the substantial economic and employment disabilities of women in relation to men. The provision, the Court found, was reasonably designed to further the state policy of cushioning the financial impact of spousal loss upon the sex for whom that loss imposes a disproportionately heavy burden. ⁶¹ And, in Schlesinger v. Ballard, ⁶² the Court sustained a provision requiring the mandatory discharge from the Navy of a male officer who has twice failed of promotion to certain levels, which in Ballard's case meant discharge after nine years of service, whereas women officers were entitled to 13 years of service before mandatory discharge for want of promotion. The difference was held to be a rational recognition of the fact that male and female officers were dissimilarly situated and that women had far fewer promotional opportunities than men had.

Although in each of these cases the Court accepted the proffered justification of remedial purpose without searching inquiry, later cases caution that the mere recitation of a benign, compensatory purpose is not an automatic shield which protects against any inquiry into the actual purposes underlying a statutory scheme. ⁶³ Rather, after specifically citing the heightened scrutiny that all sex classifications are subjected to, the Court looks to the statute and to its legislative history to ascertain that the scheme does not actually penalize women, that it was actually enacted to compensate for past discrimination, and that it does not reflect merely archaic and overbroad generalizations about women in its moving force. But where a statute is deliberately enacted to compensate for particular economic disabilities suffered by women, it serves an important governmental objective and will be sustained if it is substantially related to achievement of that objective. ⁶⁴

Many of these lines of cases converged in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, in which the Court stiffened and applied its standards for evaluating claimed benign distinctions benefitting women and additionally appeared to apply the intermediate standard itself more strictly. The case involved a male nurse who wished to attend a female-only nursing school located in the city in which he lived and worked; if he could not attend this particular school he would have had to commute 147 miles to another nursing school that did accept men, and he would have had difficulty doing so and retaining his job. The state defended on the basis that the female-only policy was justified as providing educational affirmative action for females. Recitation of a benign purpose, the Court said, was not alone sufficient. [A] State can evoke a compensatory purpose to justify an otherwise discriminatory classification only if members of the gender benefitted by the classification actually suffer a disadvantage related to the classification. ⁶⁵ But women did not lack opportunities to obtain training in nursing; instead they dominated the field. In the Court's view, the state policy did not compensate for discriminatory barriers facing women, but it perpetuated the stereotype of nursing as a woman's job. [A]lthough the State recited a 'benign, compensatory purpose,' it failed to establish that the alleged objective is the actual purpose underlying the discriminatory classification. ⁶⁶ Even if the classification was premised on the proffered basis, the Court concluded, it did not substantially and directly relate to the objective, because the school permitted men to audit the nursing classes and women could still be adversely affected by the presence of men. ⁶⁷

More on the Fourteenth Amendment

Footnotes

1. While the emphasis is upon governmental action, private affirmative actions may implicate statutory bars to uses of race. E.g., McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U.S. 273 (1976), held that, not in the context of an affirmative action program, white people were as entitled as any group to the protection of federal laws banning racial discrimination in employment. The Court emphasized that it was not passing at all on the permissibility of affirmative action programs. Id. at 280 n.8. In United Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193 (1979), the Court held that Title VII did not prevent employers from instituting voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action plans. Accord, Johnson v. Transportation Agency, 480 U.S. 616 (1987). Nor does title VII prohibit a court from approving a consent decree providing broader relief than the court would be permitted to award. Local 93, Int'l Ass'n of Firefighters v. City of Cleveland, 478 U.S. 501 (1986). And, court-ordered relief pursuant to title VII may benefit persons not themselves the victims of discrimination. Local 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers' Int'l Ass'n v. EEOC, 478 U.S. 421 (1986).

2. E.g., Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 22-25 (1971).

3. Programs to overcome past societal discriminations against women have been approved, Kahn v. Shevin, 416 U.S. 351 (1974); Schlesinger v. Ballard, 419 U.S. 498 (1975); Califano v. Webster, 430 U.S. 313 (1977), but gender classifications are not as suspect as racial ones. Preferential treatment for American Indians was approved, Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535 (1974), but on the basis that the classification was political rather than racial.

4. The constitutionality of a law school admissions program in which minority applicants were preferred for a number of positions was before the Court in DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974), but the Court did not reach the merits.

5. 430 U.S. 144 (1977). Chief Justice Burger dissented, id. at 180, and Justice Marshall did not participate.

6. For a detailed discussion of the use of racial considerations in apportionment and districting by the States, see infra Amendment 14: Section 1: Rights Guaranteed: Fundamental Interests: The Political Process: Apportionment and Districting.

7. 430 U.S. at 155-65. Joining this part of the opinion were Justices Brennan, Blackmun, and Stevens.

8. 430 U.S. at 165-68. Joining this part of the opinion were Justices Stevens and Rehnquist. In a separate opinion, Justice Brennan noted that preferential race policies were subject to several substantial arguments: (1) they may disguise a policy that perpetuates disadvantageous treatment; (2) they may serve to stimulate society's latent race consciousness; (3) they may stigmatize recipient groups as much as overtly discriminatory practices against them do; (4) they may be perceived by many as unjust. The presence of the Voting Rights Act and the Attorney General's supervision made the difference to him in this case. Id. at 168. Justices Stewart and Powell concurred, agreeing with Justice White that there was no showing of a purpose on the legislature's part to discriminate against white voters and that the effect of the plan was insufficient to invalidate it. Id. at 179.

9. 438 U.S. 265 (1978).

10. Four Justices did not reach the constitutional question. In their view, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the ground of race, color, or national origin by any recipient of federal financial assistance, outlawed the college's program and made unnecessary any consideration of the Constitution. See 78 Stat. 252, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d to 2000d-7. These Justices would have admitted Bakke and barred the use of race in admissions. 438 U.S. at 408-21 (Justices Stevens, Stewart, and Rehnquist and Chief Justice Burger). The remaining five Justices agreed among themselves that Title VI, on its face and in light of its legislative history, proscribed only what the Equal Protection Clause proscribed. 438 U.S. at 284-87 (Justice Powell), 328-55 (Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun). They thus reached the constitutional issue.

11. 438 U.S. at 355-79 (Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun). The intermediate standard of review adopted by the four Justices is that formulated for gender cases. Racial classifications designed to further remedial purposes 'must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.' Id. at 359.

12. 438 U.S. at 287-320.

13. See 438 U.S. at 319-20 (Justice Powell).

14. 448 U.S. 448 (1980). Justice Stewart, joined by Justice Rehnquist, dissented in one opinion, id. at 522, while Justice Stevens dissented in another. Id. at 532.

15. 448 U.S. at 517.

16. Whether federal agencies or state legislatures and state agencies have the same breadth and leeway to make findings and formulate remedies was left unsettled, but that they have some such power seems evident. 448 U.S. at 473-80. The program was an exercise of Congress's spending power, but the constitutional objections raised had not been previously resolved in that context. The plurality therefore turned to Congress's regulatory powers, which in this case undergirded the spending power, and found the power to lie in the Commerce Clause with respect to private contractors and in section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment with respect to state agencies. The Marshall plurality appeared to attach no significance in this regard to the fact that Congress was the acting party.

17. 448 U.S. at 484-85, 489 (Chief Justice Burger), 513-15 (Justice Powell).

18. 448 U.S. at 484-89 (Chief Justice Burger), 514-515 (Justice Powell), 520-521 (Justice Marshall).

19. Guidance on constitutional issues is not necessarily afforded by cases arising under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Court having asserted that the statutory prohibition with which the employer must contend was not intended to extend as far as that of the Constitution, and that voluntary employer action can play a crucial role in furthering Title VII's purpose of eliminating the effects of discrimination in the workplace. Johnson v. Transportation Agency, 480 U.S. 616, 628 n.6, 630 (1987) (upholding a local governmental agency's voluntary affirmative action plan predicated upon underrepresentation of women rather than upon past discriminatory practices by that agency). The constitutionality of the agency's plan was not challenged. See id. at 620 n.2.

20. 476 U.S. 267 (1986).

21. 480 U.S. 149 (1987).

22. 476 U.S. at 294. A plurality of Justices in Wygant thought that past societal discrimination alone is insufficient to justify racial classifications; they would require some convincing evidence of past discrimination by the governmental unit involved.476 U.S. at 274-76 (opinion of Justice Powell, joined by Chief Justice Burger and by Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor).

23. 480 U.S. at 182-83 (opinion of Justice Brennan, joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun, and Powell). A majority of Justices emphasized that the egregious nature of the past discrimination by the governmental unit justified the ordered relief. 480 U.S. at 153 (opinion of Justice Brennan), id. at 189 (Justice Stevens).

24. 488 U.S. 469 (1989). Croson was decided by a 6-3 vote. The portions of Justice O'Connor's opinion adopted as the opinion of the Court were joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and by Justices White, Stevens, and Kennedy. The latter two Justices joined only part of Justice O'Connor's opinion; each added a separate concurring opinion. Justice Scalia concurred separately; Justices Marshall, Brennan, and Blackmun dissented.

25. 497 U.S. 547 (1990). This was a 5-4 decision, Justice Brennan's opinion of the Court being joined by Justices White, Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens. Justice O'Connor wrote a dissenting opinion joined by the Chief Justice and by Justices Scalia and Kennedy, and Justice Kennedy added a separate dissenting opinion joined by Justice Scalia.

26. 497 U.S. at 564-65.

27. 488 U.S. at 501-02.

28. 488 U.S. at 506.

29. 488 U.S. at 508.

30. 497 U.S. at 600. Justice O'Connor's dissenting opinion contended that the case does not present 'a considered decision of the Congress and the President.' Id. at 607 (quoting Fullilove, 448 U.S. at 473).

31. 497 U.S. at 563 & n.11. For the dissenting views of Justice O'Connor see id. at 606-07. See also Croson, 488 U.S. at 504 (opinion of Court).

32. 515 U.S. 200 (1995). This was a 5-4 decision. Justice O'Connor's opinion for Court was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, and by Justices Kennedy, Thomas, and-to the extent not inconsistent with his own concurring opinion-Scalia. Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer dissented.

33. 515 U.S. at 227 (emphasis original).

34. 539 U.S. 306 (2003).

35. 539 U.S. 244 (2003).

36. 539 U.S. at 316.

37. 539 U.S. at 335.

38. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 315. While an educational institution will receive deference in its judgment as to whether diversity is essential to its educational mission, the courts must closely scrutinize the means by which this goal is achieved. Thus, the institution will receive no deference regarding the question of the necessity of the means chosen and will bear the burden of demonstrating that each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that an applicant's race or ethnicity is the defining feature of his or her application. Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin (Fisher I),570 U.S. 297, 298 (2013) (citation omitted). In its 2013 decision in Fisher, the Court did not rule on the substance of the challenged affirmative action program and instead remanded the case so that the reviewing appellate court could apply the correct standard of review. However, the Court issued a subsequent decision in Fisher addressing the Texas program directly. See Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin (Fisher II), 136 S. Ct. 2198 (2016).

39. 539 U.S. at 272-73.

40. 438 U.S. at 317.

41. 438 U.S. at 284-85.

42. Fisher II, 136 S. Ct. at 2206.

43. Id. at 2208.

44. Id. at 2209.

45. Id.

46. Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin (Fisher I), 570 U.S. 297, 298 (2013). The first of these principles is that strict scrutiny requires the university to demonstrate with clarity that its purpose or interest is both constitutionally permissible and substantial, and that its use of the classification is necessary . . . to the accomplishment of its purpose. Id. at 309. The second principle is that the decision to pursue the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity is, in substantial measure, an academic judgment to which some, but not complete, judicial deference is proper. Id. at 310. The third is that no deference is owed in determining whether the use of race is narrowly tailored; rather, the university bears burden of proving a non-racial approach would not promote its interests about as well and at tolerable administrative expense. Id. at 312.

47. Fisher II, 136 S. Ct. at 2209-10.

48. Id.

49. Id. at 2210-11. On the other hand, the Court emphasized that the university cannot claim educational benefits in diversity writ large. Id. at 2211. A university's goals cannot be elusory or amorphous-they must be sufficiently measurable to permit judicial scrutiny of the policies adopted to reach them. Id. The Court also noted that the asserted goals of UT's affirmative action program mirror those approved in earlier cases (e.g., ending stereotypes and promoting cross-racial understanding). Id. at 2211.

50. Id. at 2211-13. The Court further emphasized that the fact that race allegedly plays a minor role in UT admissions, given that approximately 75% of the incoming class is admitted under the 10% plan, shows that the challenged use of race in determining the composition of the rest of the incoming class is narrowly tailored, not that it is unconstitutional. Id. at 2212.

51. Id. at 2212-14.

52. Id. at 2211 (Petitioner's contention that the University's goal was insufficiently concrete is rebutted by the record).

53. Id. at 2211-12.

54. 551 U.S. 701 (2007). Another case involving racial diversity in public schools, Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, was argued separately before the Court on the same day, but the two cases were subsequently consolidated and both were addressed in the cited opinion.

55. In Seattle, students could choose among 10 high schools in the school district, but, if an oversubscribed school was not within 10 percentage points of the district's overall white/nonwhite racial balance, the district would assign students whose race would serve to bring the school closer to the desired racial balance. 127 S. Ct. at 2747. In Jefferson County, assignments and transfers were limited when such action would cause a school's black enrollment to fall below 15 percent or exceed 50 percent. Id. at 2749.

56. 127 S. Ct. at 2753-54. The Court also noted that, in Grutter, the Court had relied upon considerations unique to institutions of higher education. Id. at 2574 (finding that, as stated in Grutter, 539 U.S. at 329, because of the expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with the university environment, universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition).

57. In his analysis of whether the plans were narrowly tailored to the governmental interest in question, Justice Kennedy focused on a lack of clarity in the administration and application of Kentucky's plan and the use of the crude racial categories of white and non-white (which failed to distinguish among racial minorities) in the Seattle plan. 127 S. Ct. at 2790-91.

58. 127 S. Ct. at 2760-61. Some other means suggested by Justice Kennedy (which by implication could be constitutionally used to address racial imbalance in schools) included strategic site selection for new schools, the redrawing of attendance zones, the allocation of resources for special programs, the targeted recruiting of students and faculty, and the tracking of enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race.

59. Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977) (When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale enjoys the assent of five Justices, 'the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgment on the narrowest grounds . . . .').

60. 416 U.S. 351 (1974).

61. 416 U.S. at 355.

62. 419 U.S. 498 (1975).

63. Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. 636, 648 (1975); Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. 199, 209 n.8 (1977); Orr v. Orr, 440 U.S. 268, 280-82 (1979); Wengler v. Druggists Mutual Ins. Co., 446 U.S. 142, 150-52 (1980). In light of the stiffened standard, Justice Stevens has called for overruling Kahn, Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. at 223-24, but Justice Blackmun would preserve that case. Orr v. Orr, 440 U.S. at 284. Cf. Regents of the Univ. of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 302-03 (1978) (Justice Powell; less stringent standard of review for benign sex classifications).

64. Califano v. Webster, 430 U.S. 313, 316-18, 320 (1977). There was no doubt that the provision sustained in Webster had been adopted expressly to relieve past societal discrimination. The four Goldfarb dissenters concurred specially, finding no difference between the two provisions. Id. at 321.

65. 458 U.S. 718 (1982).

66. 458 U.S. at 728.

67. 458 U.S. at 730. In addition to obligating the state to show that in fact there was existing discrimination or effects from past discrimination, the Court also appeared to take the substantial step of requiring the state to establish that the legislature intended the single-sex policy to compensate for any perceived discrimination. Id. at 730 n.16. A requirement that the proffered purpose be the actual one and that it must be shown that the legislature actually had that purpose in mind would be a notable stiffening of equal protection standards.

68. In the major dissent, Justice Powell argued that only a rational basis standard ought to be applied to sex classifications that would expand women's choices, but that the exclusion here satisfied intermediate review because it promoted diversity of educational opportunity and was premised on the belief that single-sex colleges offer distinctive benefits to society. Id. at 735, 740 (emphasis by Justice), 743. The Court noted that, because the state maintained no other single-sex public university or college, the case did not present the question of whether States can provide 'separate but equal' undergraduate institutions for males and females, id. at 720 n.1, although Justice Powell thought the decision did preclude such institutions. Id. at 742-44. See Vorchheimer v. School Dist. of Philadelphia, 532 F. 2d 880 (3d Cir. 1976) (finding no equal protection violation in the maintenance of two single-sex high schools of equal educational offerings, one for males, one for females), aff'd by an equally divided Court, 430 U.S. 703 (1977) (Justice Rehnquist not participating).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Affirmative Action Under the Fourteenth Amendment - FindLaw

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Fourteenth Amendment states that all United States citizens are entitled to "equal protection under the laws." So what does that mean for programs aimed at counteracting past discrimination? It's been up to the Supreme Court to figure that out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Supreme Court has upheld affirmative action by universities seeking more racial diversity in their student bodies, relying partly on the idea that the First Amendment and academic freedom allows colleges to choose their own student body. The constitutional rights in the First Amendment were first raised in an affirmative action case by Justice Lewis Powell Jr. (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978) although the high court ultimately ruled against the university. In a later case, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion that rejected that the First Amendment could authorize "a public university to do what would otherwise violate the Equal Protection Clause." In this photo, demonstrators from an organization calling itself Anti-Bakke Decision Coalition carry signs as they march in New York City in 1978 to protest the decision. (AP Photo/Dan Goodrich)

Throughout much of U.S. history, racial classifications have been used to discriminate against African Americans, most of whose ancestors were originally brought to the New World as slaves or were born into slavery there.

Even after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) guaranteeing equal protection of the laws, the Supreme Court upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This policy remained law until the Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, reversed Plessy in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Originally mandating desegregation in education, Brown has subsequently been applied to all areas of public racial discrimination.

Some argue that minority status should be a postive factor in employment

Some advocates of racial equality argued the necessity of using minority race status as a positive factor in college admissions and employment to help minorities overcome the effects of past discrimination by enabling them to catch up educationally and economically.

Proponents of such "affirmation action" also justified racial preferences on the basis of creating role models within minority communities, bringing professional services to such communities, and increasing diversity.

Absent compensating individuals for discrete instances of past discrimination, the Supreme Court chose to subject all racial preferences to strict scrutiny, requiring government to show a compelling interest to justify them. In some cases, such scrutiny has allowed for positive considerations of race as long as they fall short of strict racial quotas that treat individuals as members of racial classes rather than as discrete individuals.

Affirmative action cases have relied on First Amendmnet

Two of three prominent Supreme Court cases dealing with affirmative action programs in education have relied in part on the First Amendment.

In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the medical school at the University of California at Davis had denied admission to Alan Bakke, a white man, despite his grades and test scores being above those of the 16 African Americans selected for an entering class of 100 students.

Four justices would have admitted Bakke on the basis that all considerations of race were impermissible under the Fourteenth Amendment in circumstances where the school had no past history of racial discrimination. Four others would have accepted racial preferences and even racial quotas as appropriate. Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. split the difference. Of significance, he relied in part on the First Amendment.

Justice Powell: Academic freedom can play a role in college admissions

Powell observed that " Academic freedom, though not a specifically enumerated constitutional right, long has been viewed as a special concern of the First Amendment. The freedom of a university to make its own judgments as to education includes the selection of its student body."

Powell further observed that "in arguing that its universities must be accorded the right to select those students who will contribute the most to the 'robust exchange of ideas,' petitioner invokes a countervailing constitutional interest, that of the First Amendment."

Powell subsequently argued that the university could exercise its freedom to give some weight to race in its admissions process, as long as it did not use strict quotas, as he believed the University of California had improperly done.

Court upheld narrowly tailored use of racial preference in school admission

The Court encountered two similar cases in 2003. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - in upholding what she considered to be narrowly tailored use of racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) - cited Powell's earlier use of the First Amendment in her lead opinion.

Justice Clarence Thomas attempted to answer in a partial dissent joined by Justice Antonin Scalia. Tracing what he called "the constitutionalization of 'academic freedom' " back to Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) and Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), Thomas wrote that " 'it is the business' of this Court to explain itself when it cites provisions of the Constitution to invent new doctrines - including the idea that the First Amendment authorizes a public university to do what would otherwise violate the Equal Protection Clause. The majority fails in its summary effort to prove this point."

The Court did not raise the First Amendment in the companion case of Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), in which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote a decision classifying the admissions policy of the University of Michigan's undergraduate college, which awarded a fixed number of points to the applications of minorities, as the kind of quota that the Court had prohibited in the Bakke. With recent changes on the U.S. Supreme Court, it may well revisit this issue in the near future
John Vile is professor of political science and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University. He is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the First Amendment. This article was originally published in 2009.
Send Feedback on this article

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Supreme Court has upheld affirmative action by universities seeking more racial diversity in their student bodies, relying partly on the idea that the First Amendment and academic freedom allows colleges to choose their own student body. The constitutional rights in the First Amendment were first raised in an affirmative action case by Justice Lewis Powell Jr.

# data[].attributes.headline
AMAZING teaching unit on Voting Rights-- has great videos and links embedded

# data[].attributes.subject
AMAZING teaching unit on Voting Rights-- has great videos and links embedded

# data[].attributes.headline
Changing the Constitution-- National popular vote compact

# data[].attributes.subject
Changing the Constitution-- National popular vote compact

# data[].attributes.headline
great short (25 minutes) documentary about segregation in housing and redlining

# data[].attributes.subject
great short (25 minutes) documentary about segregation in housing and redlining

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mark lopez

director, designer & animator

Mark Lopez is an award-winning director of motion design who has refined his craft at world-class motion studios on both coasts of the U.S. alongside some of the most creative minds in the country. Mark specializes in illustrated 2D mixed media storytelling with an eye for composition. Silkworm is Mark's studio practice, based in Austin, Texas, and collaborating all over the world.

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN

WRITER & NARRATOR

Richard Rothstein is a distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute, a senior fellow, emeritus, at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a senior fellow of the Haas Institute at the University of California (Berkeley). Richard's book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America , was designated one of ten finalists on the National Book Awards' long list for the best nonfiction book of 2017.

YOUTOOCANWOO

MUSIC, SOUND DESIGN & MIX

YouTooCanWoo is a an artist-owned music and audio production company based in Brooklyn, New York. YouTooCanWoo's holistic approach to audio blurs the lines between the conventional roles of music and sound design, blending genres, influences, and historical context to create truly immersive experiences. They have been responsible for the production and mixing of MGMT's debut EP Time to Pretend, creating the sound identity of Spotify, MTV, and NBCUniversal; the sound design for official SXSW Film Festival selection Mateo. as well as the original music, sound design and mix in ads for major brands like Apple, Google, Hershey's, and Pepsi.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Short Film based on the book, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. The forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy.

# data[].attributes.headline
Alaska MMIW-- missing murdered indigenous women

# data[].attributes.subject
Alaska MMIW-- missing murdered indigenous women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Indigenous women are disappearing and being murdered at alarming rates throughout the United States and Canada. Alaska continues to have one of the highest rates which is devastating for our communities and our families.

This Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) Resource page is meant to provide current information on this national crisis, answer questions and provide resources as to what you and your community can do to help or how to become involved in the national movement to stop the abduction and murder of our Indigenous sisters, mothers and daughters.

Please return periodically to this resource page as the AKNWRC will continue to add links, resources and action items.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
MMIW Resources | Alaska Native Women's Resource Center

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Indigenous women are disappearing and being murdered at alarming rates throughout the United States and Canada. Alaska continues to have one of the highest rates which is devastating for our communities and our families.

# data[].attributes.headline
Elizabeth Peratrovich and the 1954 Civil Rights Act

# data[].attributes.subject
Elizabeth Peratrovich and the 1954 Civil Rights Act

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Peratrovich and her husband rallied Natives to ensure the passage of the 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States.

Credit... Alaska State Archives

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
It was hardly the first affront. They had grown up in a segregated Alaska: separate schools, hospitals, theaters, restaurants and cemeteries. But for Elizabeth Peratrovich and her husband, Roy, Tlingit natives, the sign they spotted one day in late 1941inDouglas, just across the channel from downtown Juneau, was the final straw.

"No Natives Allowed" read the notice on a hotel door.

"The proprietor of Douglas Inn does not seem to realize that our Native boys are just as willing as the white boys to lay down their lives to protect the freedom that he enjoys," they wrote in a letter to Ernest Gruening, the territory's governor, signaling the start of their campaign to fight discrimination in Alaska.

Calling such open bias "an outrage," the couplecontinued, "We will still be here to guard our beloved country while hordes of uninterested whites will be fleeing South."

Gruening agreed with the Peratroviches, and they joined forces. In 1943, they attempted to usher an antidiscrimination bill through Alaska's two-branch Territorial Legislature. It failed, with a tie vote of 8-8 in the House.

In the two years that followed, the Peratroviches redoubled their efforts, urging Native Alaskans to campaign for seats in the Legislature and taking their cause on the road to gain support. They even left their children in the care of an orphanage for a summer so that they could travel across the state more freely.

By the time the new bill reached the Senate floor, on Feb. 5, 1945, Congress had increased the size of the territory's Legislature, two Natives had been elected to it, and Alaska's House had already approved the bill. Though the odds of passage were high, the bill set off hours of passionate debate and drew so many onlookers that the crowd spilled out of the gallery doors.

Senator Allen Shattuck argued that the measure would "aggravate rather than allay" racial tensions.

"Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?" he was quoted as saying in Gruening's 1973 autobiography, "Many Battles."

When the floor was opened to public comments, Peratrovich set down her knitting needles and rose from her seat in the back.

Taking the podium, she said: "I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind the gentlemen with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights."

She gave examples of the injustices that she and her family had faced because of their background and called on the lawmakers to act. "You as legislators," she said, "can assert to the world that you recognize the evil of the present situation and speak your intent to help us overcome discrimination."

Her testimony, The Daily Alaska Empire wrote, shamed the opposition into a "defensive whisper."

The gallery broke out in a "wild burst of applause," Gruening wrote. The 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act was passed, 11-5.

Image

Peratrovich and others on Feb. 16, 1945, with Ernest Gruening, Alaska's governor, as he signed legislation that entitled all Alaskans to "full and equal enjoyment" of public establishments. Feb. 16 is now celebrated in Alaska as Elizabeth Peratrovich Day. Credit... Alaska State Library, Alaska Territorial Governors Collection

Gruening signed the bill into law on Feb. 16 - a date now celebrated by the state each year. The legislation entitled all Alaskans to "full and equal enjoyment" of public establishments, setting a misdemeanor penalty for violators. It also banned discriminatory signage based on race.

It was the first antidiscrimination act in the United States. It would be nearly 20 years before the federal Civil Rights Act would be passed, in 1964, and 14 years before Alaska would become a state.

In 2020, the United States Mint will commemorate Peratrovich on a $1 coin. A gallery of the Alaska House of Representatives has been named in her honor, and a bronze bust sculpted by her son Roy Jr. adorns the lobby of the State Capitol.

And yet, aside from her lauded speech, "most people know very little about her," said Annie Boochever, whose biography, "Fighter in Velvet Gloves," written with Roy Peratrovich Jr., was published this year.

"My mother was determined to stand her ground, but she would always do it with grace and dignity," Roy Jr. wrote in the introduction.

She was born on July 4, 1911, in Petersburg, in what was then the District of Alaska, the daughter of a Native woman and her mother's Irish brother-in-law. The two left her in the care of the Salvation Army, and she was adopted by Andrew Wanamaker, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Jean, a basket weaver. Wanamaker was a charter member of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, a nonprofit organization formed to address racism.

Elizabeth grew up speaking Tlingit and English and living at a subsistence level with her parents in Sitka, a coastal city in the archipelago of southeast Alaska. When she was 10, the family moved more than 100 miles further southeast to Klawock, a Native village on Prince of Wales Island. There she met her future husband, the son of afisherman from the Balkans, and a Tlingit woman. Though they had attended separate boarding schools, they both graduated from the public high school in Ketchikan, about 70 miles east of Klawock.The school had been integrated after a Tlingit leader successfully sued the school board.

They married in 1931 and returned to Klawock, where Roy Peratrovich worked as a policeman, a chief clerk and a postmaster. He then served as the village mayor for four terms. He was also a member and grand president of the Alaska Native Brotherhood.

Elizabeth raised their children, Roy Jr., Frank Allen and Loretta Marie. She loved to dance andenjoyed watching wrestling on television; she knew all of Gorgeous George's moves and often yelled at the screen as she watched.

"Dad just looked at me and said, 'That's your mother,' " Roy Jr. said in an interview. "We laughed."

In 1941, the Peratroviches moved hundreds of miles north to bustling Juneau, the capital of what was by then the Alaska Territory, to play a larger role in regional politics. By the time Elizabeth was elected grand president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, a counterpart to the Brotherhood, in 1944, Roy was leading the Brotherhood.

Together they would lay a civil rights framework for future generations, said Paulette Moreno, the Sisterhood's current grand president.

She likened their efforts to "house posts," the often beautifully carved structures upon which a traditional Tlingit house stands. Yet, she said, "The shelter is not solid or complete because we witness discrimination and harassment in our communities today. But Elizabeth and Roy have given us role models."

In 1954, Roy Peratrovich accepted a position with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and moved the family to Oklahoma. But when Elizabeth learned in 1956 that she had breast cancer, they returned to Juneau. Once her illness worsened, she entered a Christian Science care center in Seattle, where Roy Jr. was attending college.

She died on Dec. 1, 1958, at 47.

She was buried in the shade of a Sitka spruce in Juneau's Evergreen Cemetery, beside a plot reserved for her husband, who died in 1989.

Every year, a groundskeeper opens the bollards that block street access to the grave for one day, on Feb. 16 - Elizabeth Peratrovich Day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Peratrovich, Rights Advocate for Alaska Natives (Published 2019)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Peratrovich and her husband rallied Natives to ensure the passage of the 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States. Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. It was hardly the first affront.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Constitution in American Life - U3 Q1: America's Third Founding and the Pursuit of Equality

# data[].attributes.headline
Q3: The Amendment Process WTP Professors

# data[].attributes.subject
Q3: The Amendment Process WTP Professors

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Constitution in American Life - U3 Q3: The Amendment Process

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare. Yet repeated, false allegations of fraud can make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to participate in elections.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
- What we're gonna do in this video is talk about the terms judicial activism and judicial restraint. In many videos, we have talked about how the judicial branch, one of its main powers, is to be a check on the executive and legislative branch, that it can exercise judicial review over them. It can say that a legislative action, that a law, that a statute is unconstitutional. It can say that an executive action, say a rule or regulation or an executive order, is unconstitutional, but as it's doing that, as it's exercising its judicial review, how does it go about doing that? And this term judicial activism was first introduced by Arthur Schlesinger, who we've talked about in other videos, and it's meant to imply a judiciary that is not strictly just ruling based on maybe what the Constitution says but also their own personal ideas. So personal views. It sometimes has an implication that the judges are overreaching in some way. Some people might say, and this would be a little bit of a negative, "legislating from the bench." Legislating from the bench, and you'll often hear is that, "Hey, that judge or that court is legislating "from the bench," from the people who don't like their ruling. They're saying, "Hey, they're not strictly looking "at the law. "They're trying to make their own laws "through their rulings." Now some would say that it's necessary for the judicial to do this because they are interpreting the Constitution in the world as it is, and the world that we are in changes over time. So it is really a form of positive activism, that they are defending liberties, that they are defending rights, especially in the social context that we're in. I'll leave you to decide whether you think this is a good idea or not. Now judicial restraint is the opposite of it. This is a situation where the judges or the courts limit their power, so limit their own power, their own power, where they say, "Hey, look, our job is to just be the umpire or the referee. "Our job is not to make new rules, "and so we are just going to strictly think "about whether something is constitutional "or whether it is not," and one of the most seminal cases on judicial activism versus judicial restraint happened in the early 1960s, and that is the case of Baker versus Carr, and so what happens is is that Baker is a resident of Shelby County, Tennessee. He was actually of the former mayor of a town outside of Memphis, which is in this area right over here, and he says that, "Look, the state is not reapportioning "its legislative districts the way it should be," that in general every 10 years there is a census, and based on that, we have been understanding of where the population sits, and then the state should be reapportioning districts based on population, but what Baker argued is is that the state of Tennessee actually did not redistrict since 1901, after the census of 1900, and it was now the early 1960s, and he says because of that, and he invoked the 14th amendment, you weren't getting equal protection, that people in his county that had gotten increasingly urban and had gotten increasingly dense over the course of those 60 years, that they were getting the same representation despite having a larger population than some of the rural areas where they have a lower population and had the same number of representatives, and so he takes this case against the Secretary of State of Tennessee at the time, who was Carr, and it eventually gets to the Supreme Court, and the essential question in Baker versus Carr is whether the courts even have jurisdiction over legislative districting because the districting was a power of the state legislature in Tennessee, and in this case, the United States Supreme Court actually did vote in favor of Baker. So not only did they say that Baker was right in asking for this redistricting, it had huge implications in saying that, yes, courts, like the United States Supreme Court, do have jurisdiction over something that was officially a legislative duty, telling the legislative that, "Look, you've got to do this 'cause "by not doing this action, "by exercising your discretion there, "you might not be allowing everyone to have "equal protection." Many have argued, including the two dissenters to the opinion that this was a form of judicial activism. It increased the power of the judiciary, and to appreciate the view of the United States Supreme Court that they do have jurisdiction over legislative districting, here is part of Associate Justice Douglas's concurring opinion. "Where the performance of a duty is left to the discretion "and good judgment of an executive officer, "the judiciary will not compel the exercise "of his discretion one way or the other... "for to do so would be to take over the office...." So he's saying, look, when it is someone's job where there's an executive officer to do this duty, then the courts should not have jurisdiction there, but then he goes on to write, "There is no doubt that the federal courts have jurisdiction "of controversies concerning voting rights. "The Civil Rights Act gives them authority "to redress the deprivation under color of any state law "of any right, privilege or immunity secured "by the Constitution of the United States "or by any Act of Congress providing "for equal rights of citizens...." Really saying that, look, if the court can see that some right is being violated, some right is described in any under the state law, under the United States Constitution, then the courts do have jurisdiction. "The right to vote in both federal "and state elections was protected "by the judiciary long before that right received "the explicit protection it is now accorded." So he's saying, look, even before the Civil Rights Act, even before the 14th amendment, that this was something that was part of the charter of the judiciary, part of the federal court system, and so it does lean in favor of judicial activism because you can imagine courts, and they have cited Baker versus Carr since the 1960s repeatedly as reason, saying, hey look, we're trying to protect people's rights, and people have a right to do X, Y, or Z, even if it hasn't been explicitly legislated. Now there were two dissenters, and this is what the dissenters wrote. "The courts authority--possessed of neither of the purse "nor the sword..." So here, the purse, that's the legislative branch that can think about budgets or the sword, that's the executive branch. The president's the commander in chief. "Ultimately rests on sustained public confidence "in its moral sanction." Let me underline that. "On sustained public confidence in its moral sanction. "Such feeling must be nourished "by the Court's complete detachment, "in fact and in appearance, "from political entanglement and by abstention "from injecting itself into the clash "of political forces in political settlements." So here, Associate Justice Frankfurter, in his dissenting opinion, is saying, look, we should stay out of this, that not only is it not our part to rule here, to say that, hey look, the legislative needs to do this redistricting again. He's saying that it actually undermines the credibility of the court, that the credibility "ultimately rests on sustained public confidence "in its moral sanction," and that by ruling in favor of Baker the court was overstepping of these bounds, that people would say, hey, you're starting to legislate from the bench. You're trying to get involved in the political, even though the court is supposed to stay above the fray of the political, or another way to think about this is that Associate Justice Frankfurter subscribed to the idea of judicial restraint and felt that the other six justices that were voting in favor of Baker were practicing to some degree judicial activism. They were getting into the territory of the other branches of government.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Judicial activism and judicial restraint (video) | Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What we're gonna do in this video is talk about the terms judicial activism and judicial restraint. In many videos, we have talked about how the judicial branch, one of its main powers, is to be a check on the executive and legislative branch, that it can exercise judicial review over them.

# data[].attributes.headline
The meaning and history behind Article 1.2

# data[].attributes.subject
The meaning and history behind Article 1.2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How should the Constitution apply to a country that is very different from the one in which the Framers lived? It is among the most vexing and persistent questions in American constitutional law, as ongoing controversies over Article I, Section 2 exemplify.

Back in 1787, the United States was much smaller and predominantly agrarian. The norm was that only white, male landowners could vote in state legislative elections-and therefore in U.S. House elections under Article I, Section 2. After the Civil War, African Americans were finally recognized as equal citizens through the enactment of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, yet their civil and political rights were brutally suppressed for almost another century. Women too were denied equal citizenship for most of our history, only winning the right to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1920.

Expansion of the franchise is not the only respect in which our democracy has changed since the original Constitution. There has also been a major shift in responsibility over the enforcement of civil and political rights, away from the states and toward the federal government. The Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments all gave Congress authority to enforce the new rights they conferred. Congress has exercised its authority on numerous occasions, none more important than the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made the right to vote a reality for southern blacks who had long been excluded from democratic politics.

The federal courts have played a critical role in fostering a more inclusive democracy as well. In the 1960s, the Supreme Court articulated the "one person, one vote" principle in cases like Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964). It also struck down the poll tax in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), based on the principle that the right to vote should not depend on one's wealth or poverty. Other barriers to equal participation and representation were invalidated under the Voting Rights Act. We now take it for granted that race, sex, and economic means are not proper bases for denying or diminishing the vote.

With the renewed focus on voting rights in this century, new questions regarding the meaning and import of Article I, Section 2 have arisen. Two recent developments illuminate the challenge of applying the Constitution to a world that is very different from the one in which the Framers lived. Both concern the relationship between Article I, Section 2 and another provision of the Constitution. Both arise from the rapidly increasing Latino population, particularly in the U.S. southwest. And both raise questions that the Supreme Court has yet to resolve conclusively.

The first concerns state restrictions on who may register to vote, which many states have adopted over the past decade. One such state is Arizona, a state with a growing Latino population that adopted a law mandating documentary proof of citizenship to register. This state law conflicts with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), under which states must "accept and use" a federal registration form that does not require documentation of citizenship. Arizona argued that this federal requirement was impermissible under Article I, Section 2, because it allows states to determine the qualifications for voting in congressional elections.

This essay is part of a discussion about Article 2, Section 1 with Bradley A. Smith, Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law, Capital University Law School. Read the full discussion here.

The Supreme Court rightly rejected this argument in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013). Justice Scalia's opinion for the majority surveyed the history of Article I, agreeing that it allows states to set voting qualifications, but holding that Congress has broad power to regulate the manner of conducting congressional elections. Through the NVRA, Congress properly exercised this authority. Although it would raise constitutional doubts for Congress to prevent states from enforcing their voting qualifications, the NVRA imposed no such impediment.

While correctly decided, Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council is surely not the last word on the uneasy relationship between a state's power to set qualifications and Congress's power to regulate congressional election procedures. Arizona and other states have challenged the federal government's refusal to approve new proof-of-citizenship requirements on the federal registration form. New questions could arise if Congress were to adopt new rules regulating congressional elections, such as a uniform voter identification requirement preempting more stringent state laws.

The other recent controversy implicating Article I, Section 2 concerns the drawing of state legislative districts. For more than a half-century, the "one person, one vote" rule has required that districts be drawn on an equal population basis. Article I, Section 2 is the textual source of this requirement for congressional elections, while the Equal Protection Clause is its textual source for state legislative elections. Disagreement persists over exactly who should count in assessing whether the requisite population equality exists.

The question of who counts for state legislative redistricting was raised but not fully resolved in Evenwel v. Abbott (2016). Like every other state, Texas uses total population-including children, non-citizens, and others who are ineligible to vote-to draw its districts. The plaintiffs in Evenwel argued that the Fourteenth Amendment required Texas to equalize eligible voters among districts. The case thus raised the question whether "one person, one vote" is a principle of representational equality or voting equality.

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the challenge to Texas's districting argument, holding that the state was entitled to equalize total population and not eligible voters. The result was not surprising, given the uniform practice of the states. Justice Ginsburg's opinion for the Court relied on the language and history of Article I, Section 2, which requires that representatives be apportioned among states "according to their respective Numbers." That includes people who are not eligible to vote. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment retained this requirement, while abolishing the three-fifths clause. "It cannot be," Justice Ginsburg reasoned, "that the Fourteenth Amendment calls for the apportionment of congressional districts based on total population, but simultaneously prohibits States from apportioning their own legislative districts on the same basis."

The question Evenwel leaves open is whether states are required to equalize total population when drawing state legislative districts-or, alternatively, whether they may leave out non-voters like children, non-citizens, and prisoners. Evenwel holds that states may equalize total population, but does not decide whether they must do so. The issue could arise after the 2020 Census, if Texas or some other state decides to use eligible voters instead of total population to draw its districts. Such a decision would have the effect of weakening the voting strength of Latino communities, which tend to include more people (such as children and non-citizens) who may not vote. Evenwel suggests that "the theory of the Constitution" is that everyone should count but, again, does not definitively resolve this question.

The Arizona and Texas cases reveal the continuing importance of Article I, Section 2 to recent and ongoing controversies over the right to vote. Courts interpreting this provision should be guided by a clear-eyed recognition of how our law and society have developed since the Founding. That includes our greater inclusivity of our democracy, as well as the centrality of federal law in enforcing the right to vote. This isn't to say that the original meaning and the intent of the Constitution are irrelevant. To the contrary, they are critical touchstones, as the opinions in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council and Evenwel demonstrate. But to paraphrase Justice Felix Frankfurter, the gloss that our constitutional history has written upon words of the Constitution should also inform their interpretation. That gloss includes the expansion of the right to vote and Congress's central role in protecting it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How should the Constitution apply to a country that is very different from the one in which the Framers lived? It is among the most vexing and persistent questions in American constitutional law, as ongoing controversies over Article I, Section 2 exemplify. Back in 1787, the United States was much smaller and predominantly agrarian.

# data[].attributes.body
Stated that opponents of the ruler were result in conspiracy and intrigue and that open opposition through political parties was a good thing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Edmund Burke (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Burke was born at Dublin in Ireland, then part of the British Empire, the son of a prosperous attorney, and, after an early education at home, became a boarder at the school run by Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker from Yorkshire, at Ballitore in County Kildare.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since its final ratification in 1788, the U.S. Constitution has been changed countless times by means other than the traditional and lengthy amendment process spelled out in Article V of the Constitution itself. In fact, there are five totally legal "other" ways the Constitution can be changed.

Universally acclaimed for how much it accomplishes in so few words, the U.S. Constitution is also often criticized as being too brief-even "skeletal"-in nature. In fact, the Constitution's framers knew the document could not and should not try to address every situation that the future might hold. Clearly, they wanted to ensure that the document allowed for flexibility in both its interpretation and future application. As a result, many changes have been made to the Constitution over the years without changing a word in it.

The important process of changing the Constitution by means other than the formal amendment process has historically taken place and will continue to take place in five basic ways:

1. Legislation enacted by Congress

2. Actions of the President of the United States

3. Decisions of the federal courts

4. Activities of the political parties

5. The application of custom

Legislation

The framers clearly intended that Congress-through the legislative process -add meat to the skeletal bones of the Constitution as required by the many unforeseen future events they knew were to come.

While Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress 27 specific powers under which it is authorized to pass laws, Congress has and will continue to exercise its " implied powers " granted to it by Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 of the Constitution to pass laws it considers "necessary and proper" to best serve the people.

Consider, for example, how Congress has fleshed out the entire lower federal court system from the skeletal framework created by the Constitution. In Article III, Section 1, the Constitution provides only for "one Supreme Court and ... such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain or establish." The "from time to time" began less than a year after ratification when Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789 establishing the structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system and creating the position of attorney general. All other federal courts, including courts of appeals and bankruptcy courts, have been created by subsequent acts of Congress.

Similarly, the only top-level government offices created by Article II of the Constitution are the offices of the President and Vice President of the United States. All of the rest of the many other departments, agencies, and offices of the now-massive executive branch of government have been created by acts of Congress, rather than by amending the Constitution.

Congress itself has expanded the Constitution in the ways it has used the "enumerated" powers granted to it in Article I, Section 8. For example, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 grants Congress the power to regulate commerce between the states-"interstate commerce." But what exactly is interstate commerce and what exactly does this clause give Congress the power to regulate? Over the years, Congress has passed hundreds of seemingly unrelated laws citing its power to regulate interstate commerce. For example, since 1927, Congress has virtually amended the Second Amendment by passing gun control laws based on its power to regulate interstate commerce.

Presidential Actions

Over the years, the actions of various presidents of the United States have essentially modified the Constitution. For example, while the Constitution specifically gives Congress the power to declare war, it also deems the president to be the " Commander in Chief " of all U.S. armed forces. Acting under that title, several presidents have sent American troops into combat without an official declaration of war enacted by Congress. While flexing the commander in chief title in this way is often controversial, presidents have used it to send U.S. troops into combat on hundreds of occasions. In such cases, Congress will sometimes pass declarations of war resolution as a show of support for the president's action and the troops who have already been deployed to battle.

Similarly, while Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives presidents the power-with a supermajority approval of the Senate-to negotiate and execute treaties with other countries, the treaty-making process is lengthy and the consent of the Senate always in doubt. As a result, presidents often unilaterally negotiate "executive agreements" with foreign governments accomplishing many of the same things accomplished by treaties. Under international law, executive agreements are just as legally binding on all of the nations involved.

Decisions of the Federal Courts

In deciding many cases that come before them, the federal courts, most notably the Supreme Court, are required to interpret and apply the Constitution. The purest example of this may be in the 1803 Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison. In this early landmark case, the Supreme Court first established the principle that the federal courts could declare an act of Congress null and void if it finds that law to be inconsistent with the Constitution.

In his historic majority opinion in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, "... it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Ever since Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court has stood as the final decider of the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress.

In fact, President Woodrow Wilson once called the Supreme Court a "constitutional convention in continuous session."

Political Parties

Despite the fact that the Constitution makes no mention of political parties, they have clearly forced constitutional changes over the years. For example, neither the Constitution nor federal law provides for a method of nominating presidential candidates. The entire primary and convention process of nomination has been created and often amended by the leaders of the major political parties.

While not required by or even suggested in the Constitution, both chambers of Congress are organized and conduct the legislative process based on party representation and majority power. In addition, presidents often fill high-level appointed government positions based on political party affiliation.

The framers of the Constitution intended the electoral college system of actually electing the president and vice president to be little more than a procedural "rubber stamp" for certifying the results of each state's popular vote in presidential elections. However, by creating state-specific rules for selecting their electoral college electors and dictating how they might vote, the political parties have at least modified the electoral college system over the years.

History is full of examples of how custom and tradition have expanded the Constitution. For example, the existence, form, and purpose of the vitally important president's cabinet itself is a product of custom rather than the Constitution.

On all eight occasions when a president has died in office, the vice president has followed the path of presidential succession to be sworn into the office. The most recent example happened in 1963 when Vice President Lyndon Johnson replaced the recently assassinated President John F. Kennedy. However, until the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967-four years later-the Constitution provided that only the duties, rather than the actual title as president, should be transferred to the vice president.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Are 'Other' Ways to Change the US Constitution?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since its final ratification in 1788, the U.S. Constitution has been changed countless times by means other than the traditional and lengthy amendment process spelled out in Article V of the Constitution itself. In fact, there are five totally legal "other" ways the Constitution can be changed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A case in which the Court found that the Florida government violated the Equal Protection Clause in ordering a partial recount of the 2000 presidential election ballots.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NOTE

This brief time-line describes an American history of oppression, persecution, and discrimination in regards to voting rights. But in all of the events described here, those affected were not submissive or passive victims, - rather they fought for their rights with whatever means they had.

Similarly, much of this short summary consists of legislative and legal milestones. But those laws and court cases were the direct result of popular struggles and mass political pressure. Legislators did not enact civil rights laws out of altruistic benevolence, nor did magnanimous judges rule against discrimination from the goodness of their hearts. It was We the People who forced them to do so.

The stories of the struggles and resistance that resulted in the milestones presented here would (and does) fill books. A single pamphlet cannot document the details of those battles, but it is crucial to remember that from every act of oppression grew a dozen forms of resistance. And every victorious milestone on Freedom Road was achieved with blood, sweat, and tears.

Introduction

The two main issues addressed by the southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s were ending the "Jim Crow" system of segregation and winning the right to vote for African-Americans in the South - and nonwhites nationwide.

But the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s did not spontaneously spring up out of nowhere, nor did it disappear when its work was "done." Rather, the Freedom Movement was but one episode in a centuries-long struggle for human rights civic dignity that continues to this day. It was a movement that grew out of what came before and evolved into the struggles being waged today. Nothing illustrates this better than the centuries-long battle for voting rights.

Voting Rights Milestones 1776-1982

In essence, the struggle for voting rights in America over the past two centuries has been, and continues to be a two-part battle. The first part was to win citizenship rights for people of color and legal rights for women. The second part was to win voting rights for all citizens regardless of gender, race, economic status, or national origin.

1776: Abigail Adams asks the Continental Congress to support women's rights.

Her husband John Adams ridicules her request and vows to fight the, "Despotism of the petticoat."

1776-1828: The struggle to remove religious restrictions.

Between the first Continental Congress in 1776 and adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 the former colonies evolve into states, some of which bar Jews, Quakers, Catholics, and other "heretics," from voting or holding office.

The 1778 Constitution of South Carolina, for example, states that "No person shall be eligible to sit in the house of representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion."

The 1776 Delaware Constitution states that: "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall... also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."

When the new United States Constitution is adopted in 1787, Article VI prohibits religion restrictions by stating: "... but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Yet struggles to remove the pre-existing religious bars continue through the early 1800s, with Maryland, the last holdout, not extending voting rights to Jews until 1828.

1787: U.S. Constitution adopted.

In the debates over adopting the U.S. Constitution there are bitter arguments over who should be allowed to vote.
The slave-states insist that only white males be allowed to vote, yet they simultaneously demand that their Black slaves be counted when calculating how many members each state is entitled to in the House of Representatives. In order to gain agreement from slave holders, the new Constitution specifies that 3/5ths (60%) of the slaves in each state will be counted when apportioning seats in the House.

The Constitutional Convention cannot agree on any national voting-rights standard so they leave it up to each individual state. This results in an absurd system whereby the federal government determines who can be a citizen for the nation as a whole, but each individual state determines which of their citizens have the right to vote.

Most of the states decree that only white males are eligible to vote, and most of them limit the vote to white males who own a certain amount of property. In other words, if you are a renter, an apprentice, reside on your employer's land, or are homeless, you can't vote. Since only a small minority of white males own enough property to qualify, the great majority of the population is denied access to the ballot box. By some estimates, less than 10% of the total population are eligible to vote in the election of 1800.

Under the original Constitution adopted in 1787, the only federal office anyone can directly vote for is House of Representatives because the President and VP are elected by the Electoral College and senators are appointed by state governments. Though today senators are now directly elected, we still cannot directly vote for President, which is why Bush-II occupied the White House in 2000 even though Gore received 500,000 more votes and Trump took power 2016 after losing to Clinton by 2,800,000 votes.

1777-1807: Women lose the right to vote in all states.

The states of New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey which had previously allowed women to vote rescind those rights. After 1807 no state allows women to vote.

1777-1821: Free men of color lose their right to vote.

Those few states that had allowed free men of color and property to vote rescind that right - Maryland in 1802, New Jersey in 1807, Connecticut in 1814, New York in 1821.

1790: Citizenship limited to "whites."

The 1790 Naturalization Law explicitly states that only "free white" immigrants can become naturalized citizens. Since "white" is understood as pure European ancestry, this effectively prevents immigrants from anywhere else (and mixed-race immigrants) from becoming citizens.
And under the myth that Native-Americans are "citizens" of their "sovereign" Indian "nations" (meaning the reservations), they cannot be citizens of the United States. Therefore, they cannot vote.

1788-1856: Struggle to remove property restrictions.

For 68 years there are struggles and movements in the various states to remove property restrictions on the right to vote. These battles are often bitter and sometimes violent.

1820-1865: Abolition movement to end slavery.

The first African slaves are brought to North American in 1619 (a year before the arrival of the Mayflower). Resistance begins immediately with intermittent slave uprisings and frequent escapes. Often the escaped slaves join Indian tribes in their fight to defend tribal homelands against white encroachment and expansion of the slave system.
Political opposition to slavery among whites in the northern states begins to coalesce in the early 1820s. With the founding of the American Anti-Slave Society in 1833 a broad interracial movement committed to ending slavery emerges - openly in the northern states, clandestinely in the south. This Abolition Movement grows in size and intensity. It is met with increasingly violent opposition from slave-holders and slave states. Abolitionists are arrested, beaten, and murdered, their homes are burned, and their presses destroyed.

Within the Abolition Movement bitter disagreements regarding the future of freed slaves erupt. Some favor full citizenship including the right to vote, others advocate some form of 2nd-class citizenship without voting rights. Many want to expel the freed slaves and send them "back" to Africa, though, of course, by this time the vast majority of slaves have been born in America. The "colonizers" form the American Colonization Society which sends 20,000 former slaves to Africa where they seize land from the inhabitants and carve out the nation of Liberia.

1836: Texas denies vote to Mexicans.

After revolting from Mexico in 1836, the short-lived Republic of Texas denies both citizenship and the right to own property to anyone who had not supported the revolution. All non-anglos are assumed to be part of that category - even those who had fought for the revolution.
When Texas is admitted to the union as a slave-state in 1845, the Mexicans remaining in Texas are granted U.S. citizenship and property-rights by the federal government - in theory. But Mexican-Americans who try to vote face widespread beatings, burnings, and lynchings, except in cases where large landowners force their employees to vote as a group under supervision of their foremen who ensure that they all vote for the owner's preferred candidates.

1848: Mexican-Americans are denied voting rights in the southwest.

Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ends the Mexican-American war in 1848, Mexicans who remain in the new territories conquered by the U.S. are supposed to become full U.S. citizens according to legislation that congress is supposed to pass.
For California, that legislation takes the form of admitting it to the union as a state in 1850. While now technically U.S. citizens, Mexican-American males are denied the vote through violence and state "voter eligibility" laws as they are in Texas.

The territories of Arizona and New Mexico are not admitted to the union as states until 1912. During the 64 years between the signing of the treaty and statehood, Mexican-Americans in those territories are held in a kind of non- citizen legal limbo without voting rights. During this period, legislators, judges, and sheriffs elected entirely and only by Anglos ruthlessly use their power to strip land and water rights from Mexican and Native-Americans.

1848-1920: Women's Suffrage movement.

In 1848 the first Women's Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls, NY. It demands that women be granted all rights as full citizens including the right to vote. It also demands equality with men before the law in education employment, property rights, divorce and child custody.
For the next 72 years, women - and some male supporters - speak out, petition, lobby, sue, protest, march, and engage in civil-disobedience for the right to vote. They brave beatings, mob attacks, rape, jail, seizure and destruction of property, forced-divorce (and consequent loss of children), forced-feeding of hunger strikers, and murder, to fight for their right to be full voting citizens.

1850: Asian immigration.

With the California gold rush, Asian immigration becomes significant for the first time, mostly in the West. Under the "whites-only" clause of the 1790 Naturalization Law, Asian immigrants cannot be citizens - but what about their children born in America? Government officials try to avoid this "problem" by preventing Asian women from coming ashore. Many are sent back, but some avoid detection and manage to get off the ship. And some Asian men marry women of other races - some of whom are citizens - what happens when their boys reach age 21?

1856: Property restrictions finally removed.

The last state to finally eliminate the property qualification is North Carolina in 1856.

1861-1865: Civil War and Emancipation.

The struggle against slavery leads to bloody Civil War. 360,000 Union soldiers - Black and white - die to defeat slavery. This represents 130 out of every 10,000 persons in the Northern states. (For comparison, deaths in the Vietnam War numbered 3 out of every 10,000.)
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the 13th Amendment in 1865 eventually end slavery as a legal concept (though the actual treatment of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and plantation laborers continues to resemble slavery in all but the legal formalities).

1867: 14th Amendment extends citizenship for Blacks.

The 14th Amendment requires all states to recognize all males born in the United States as full voting citizens - regardless of race. This creates the principle of birthright citizenship. For the first time, however, women of all races are explicitly excluded in the Constitution from voting.

1868: Women petition that womam suffrage be included in the draft 15th Amendment.

The men of congress deny their petition.

1870: 15th Amendment extends vote to African-Americans.

Adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870 extends voting rights to Black males - in theory.
In reality, there is massive resistance to the intent of the 15th Amendment in the former slave states and elsewhere. Violence, economic reprisal, and legal formalities are used to prevent Black men from voting.

The 15th Amendment does not apply to Native-Americans or Asians because they cannot be citizens. Similarly, it does not apply to Mexican-Americans in New Mexico and Arizona because those territories have not yet been admitted as states. While legally eligible to vote in Texas and California, Mexican- Americans are still denied the vote through violence, economic retaliation, and various legal stratagems.

1867-1877: Reconstruction.

During the Reconstruction Era, hundreds of thousands of Black men risk their lives and property to vote and many are elected to office. For a short period in the late 1860s African-American voters outnumber whites in the states of the former Confederacy.

1877: End of Reconstruction, betrayal of Afican-Americans.

Because of widespread cheating on both sides, the vote-count and outcome of the 1876 presidential election between Hayes the Republican and Tilden the Democrat is bitterly disputed - particularly in the state of Florida. In the end, all disputed counts are resolved by a special committee appointed by Congress. Republicans outnumber Democrats on the committee by 8 to 7. All disputes are decided in favor of the Republicans by a party-line vote of 8 to 7. Though most impartial observers believe that Tilden won the popular vote, Hayes is declared the winner.
It is widely understood, however, that a back-room deal with the Democrats who represent the overwhelming majority of white voters in the South. In return for the Democrats accepting Hayes' victory, the Republicans promise that Hayes will:

1. Remove the troops and officials who have been providing at least some limited protection to Blacks in the South.

2. Cease enforcing the 15th Amendment and other civil rights laws.

3. That a Posse Comitatus Act will be enacted into law preventing the U.S. Army from engaging in any kind of domestic law enforcement - such as fighting the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

This deal becomes known as the Compromise of 1877. The so-called "compromise" being that the Republicans retain power in Washington while white-supremacists throughout the country are given free reign to oppress and persecute non-whites.

After Hayes takes office:

1. Reign of terror. The KKK and similar terrorist groups increase their attacks against African-Americans. Blacks are expelled from office and those who try to vote are fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes, beaten, and in many cases brutally lynched. Black property owners are burned out, Black businesses destroyed, entire African-American towns are wiped out.

2. Legal disenfranchisement. New state constitutions and laws are passed to nullify the 15th Amendment. Among the new legal barriers to Black voting rights are the so-called "literacy tests" that make it impossible for non-whites to register and "Grandfather-clauses" that restrict voting rights to those men whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote - a requirement that the descendants of slaves cannot meet.
Mississippi Governor James Vardaman forthrightly explains it, " There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter, Mississippi's constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics."

3. Poll taxes. Many states impose taxes on voting. Anyone - Black or white - who cannot afford to pay the tax cannot vote. Since the taxes are high and have to be paid in cash, voting is thus limited to affluent white males. In effect, this restores a property requirement for voting.

4. Segregation laws. Laws mandating separation of the races in education, government services, public facilities and accommodations, restrooms, transportation, drinking fountains, and so on, are passed throughout the South and Midwest. Known as the "Jim Crow" system, their goal is to force African-Americans into feudal semi-slavery. Blacks who resist are beaten, jailed, and murdered. Similar systems are imposed in Western states against Latinos, Native-Americans, and Asians.

Within a few years, Black men in the South are removed from the voter registration rolls and denied the right to vote. All African-Americans who hold elected office are driven out. In Louisiana, for example, by 1900 fewer than 5,000 African-Americans are registered to vote, down from a high of 130,000 before the so-called Compromise of 1877.

1870-1923: Asians denied citizenship.

The Naturalization Act of 1870 amends the 1790 Naturalization Law to limit citizenship to "white persons and persons of African descent." Thus the ban barring Asian and Latino immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens is continued.
But the wave of Asian immigration to California and other Western states continues to undermine the "whites only" goal, particularly in regards to children who are born in the United States and thus (presumptively) American citizens under the 14th Amendment's birthright provision.

In 1898 the Supreme Court confirms that children of Asians who are born in the United States are automatically citizens. In response, politicians and much of the press decry and rail against a "yellow peril" that they claim threatens white America. A series of "exclusion acts," such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, are enacted over the following years. Court rulings and "gentlemen's agreements" are put in place to limit (or prevent altogether) any further immigration by Asians.

As with African-Americans, Latinos, and Indians, violence, lynching, and economic retaliation are used to prevent Asians from voting or exercising their civil rights.

1878: Woman Suffrage Amendment introduced in congress.

It does not pass. It takes another 42 years of courageous struggle before it is eventually passed and ratified in 1920.

1890-1920: Some states grant women the right to vote.

First Wyoming, then Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, and California extend voting rights to women. Other states follow.

1913: 17th Amendment requires direct popular election of senators.

After decades of political demand and public pressure from the Populist Movement, a constitutional amendment is passed requiring direct election of senators by the people rather than senators being appointed by state governments.

1920: 19th Amendment grants voting rights to women.

After an epic 72-year struggle, women finally win the right to vote. But prejudice and discrimination against women candidates and office-holders continues into modern times.

1924: Native-American citizenship.

Congress passes legislation extending United States citizenship to all Indians born in the United States. Many states continue to deny Native-Americans the right to vote using legal fictions, violence, and economic retaliation like those used to deny the vote to Blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

1942-1952: Asian citizenship rights.

In order to strengthen the U.S. military during WWII, Filipinos in both the United States and the Philippine Islands are declared to be American citizens in 1942. This makes them eligible for the military draft. (In 1946, with the war won, this citizenship declaration is revoked by the Recision Act in order to deny Filipinos their veteran benefits, voting rights, and of course citizenship.)
To strengthen the WWII alliance with China, the Chinese Exclusion Acts are overturned in 1943.

In 1946, the exclusion acts against immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are repealed. In 1952 all remaining Asian exclusion acts are replaced by the immigration "quota system" that allows for some Asian immigration but greatly favors European immigrants.

1944: White-only primaries ruled unconstitutional.

Out of fury at their defeat by the hated Yankees in the Civil War, rage at Emancipation of their Black slaves, and loathing for Lincoln (a Republican), southern whites refuse to vote for any Republican for any office - ever. Thus the "Solid South" comes into being - only Democrats can be elected. White southerners proudly declare themselves "Yellow-dog Democrats," meaning that if the Democratic Party nominates a yellow dog for office they will vote for the dog before they vote for a Republican candidate.
In practical terms, the "Solid South" means that the real election is the Democratic primary because the Democrat who wins the nomination inevitably wins the general election. In many southern states, the white-controlled Democratic Party decrees that only whites can vote in the Democratic primary. This effectively disenfranchises the very few Blacks who have somehow managed to register to vote because they are prevented from voting in the only elections that have any meaning.

In 1944, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall wins Smith v. Allwright in the U.S. Supreme Court which rules that all-white primary elections are unconstitutional. State officials in the South, however, devise ways of nullifying and circumventing the ruling so that Black participation in primary elections contiues to be severely limited.

1945-1960: GIs fight for civil rights.

During WWII, one out of every eight American GIs is an African-American. Latinos and Native-Americans also make up significant portions of the armed forces which are organized on a segregated basis. When they return from the battlefields they demand that all American citizens have the right to vote regardless of race. They had fought and died for democracy abroad, yet they don't have it at home.
On local, state, and federal levels GIs fight against the laws, customs, and abuses that deny them the vote and other civil rights. Before WWII, the NAACP numbers around 50,000 members, in the post-war years it swells to over 500,000.

But the racists who hold economic power and political office are too strong. Most legislative remedies are blocked by Senate filibuster and few court cases are successful. For the most part, GI efforts are defeated and suppressed. Many servicemen who had fought to free Europe from Nazi tyranny find themselves imprisoned for demanding the right to vote, and others are viciously murdered - in some cases by police or sheriffs.

Yet despite a wave of repression, they do manage to eliminate the poll tax in all but 5 states. And in 1948 the armed forces are de-segregated. GIs returning from the Korean War also take up the civil rights struggle.

1948: State laws denying the vote to Indians are overturned.

In one of the post-war period's few successful legal challenges, the federal courts overturn the last state laws (Maine, Arizona, New Mexico) designed to prevent Native-Americans from voting. But violence, economic retaliation, and different kinds of legal tricks continue to be used.

1951: Assassination of Harry & Harriette Moore.

In the late 1940s and early 50s, Harry Moore and his wife Harriette are leaders of the NAACP and Progressive Voters League of Florida. They crisscross the state encouraging and organizing African-Americans to become registered voters. They manage to register over 100,000 voters, increasing Black registration from 5% to 31% of those eligible. Their slogan is "A Voteless Citizen is a Voiceless Citizen."
On Christmas Eve, 1951, a bomb explodes under their bedroom killing them both. Though it is widely known that the KKK planted the bomb, no one is ever charged in their murder. The number African-American voters goes into steep decline as terrorism takes its toll, particularly in rural areas.

1951-1956: Tackling segregation & voting rights.

In the early 1950s, a number of school desegregation cases are filed in the federal courts by courageous students and parents who risk life and property by opposing the segregation system. In 1954 these cases are consolidated and won with the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision.
In 1955 and 56 African-Americans opposed to segregation boycott the city busses in Montgomery Alabama and Tallahassee Florida. These successful boycotts mark significant victories against segregation in the deep south.

Hundreds of voting-rights lawsuits are filed in state and federal courts. Most are either defeated, or if won they are left unenforced. But Citizenship Schools, voter education projects, and " I'm a registered voter - Are you?" campaigns begin to proliferate among African-Americans at the grass- roots level across the South.

1956-1965: Civil Rights Movement struggles for voting rights.

With the explosion of the direct-action phase of the Civil Rights Movement - sit-ins, freedom rides, marches, boycotts - voting rights and segregation emerge as two central issues, intertwined and inseparable.
Participatory direct-action organizations such as CORE, SCLC, and SNCC take the fight for voting rights and de-segregation into the deepest depths of the racist South - Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Southwest Georgia. The slogan becomes " One Man, One Vote," and instead of lawsuits the strategy is to organize people at the grass-roots to directly challenge and defy the entire "whites-only" system by demanding an end to segregation and the right to vote, face-to-face, county-by-county, state-by-state.

Opposition by the KKK and White Citizens Councils is fierce and ruthless. Law- enforcement - from the cop on the beat to FBI Headquarters in Washington - mobilizes to defend the established order of white-supremacy.

Tens of thousands of would-be voters are fired or evicted. Entire tent cities are set up to house share-croppers thrown off their land for trying to register to vote. Hundreds, then thousands are jailed. Beatings, burnings, and economic retaliation are wide-spread. Many - the actual number has never been counted - are murdered. This opposition to civil-rights is orchestrated by political and business elites determined to maintain a feudal economic and political system of exploitation and oppression.

The roll call of those killed in action grows longer:

Rev. George Wesley Lee, Humphreys County MS. 1955
Lamar Smith, Brookhaven MS. 1955
Herbert Lee, Liberty MS. 1961
Medgar Evers, Jackson MS. 1963
Louis Allen, Amite County MS. 1964
James Chaney, Neshoba County MS. 1964
Michael Schwerner, Neshoba County MS. 1964
Andrew Goodman, Neshoba County MS. 1964
Wayne Yancey, Marshall County MS. 1964
Jimmy Lee Jackson, Marion AL. 1965
Rev. James Reeb, Selma AL. 1965
Viola Liuzzo, Lowndes County AL. 1965
Jonathan Daniels, Haneyville AL. 1965
Michael Robinson, LA. 1965
Others unknown and unacknowledged

The Freedom Movement soldiers on. We bury our dead and weep for our wounded but we won't turn back. The Movement explodes in Albany, Americus, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Bogalusa, Cambridge, Canton, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Danville, Fayette Co, Gadsden, Gainesville, Greenwood, Greensboro, Hattiesburg, Jackson, McComb, Monroe, Montgomery, Nashville, New Orleans, Oxford, Rock Hill, Ruleville, St. Augustine, Selma, Shreveport, Tallahasse, and a thousand other towns and hamlets. It is a mass Movement of people rather than lawyers or lobbyists.

1964: 24th Amendment ends poll taxes.

The 24th Amendment prohibits poll taxes in federal elections.

1964-1965: Freedom Summer, Selma, and the March to Montgomery.

During the "Freedom Summer" of 1964, close to a thousand civil rights workers of all races and backgrounds from across the country converge on Mississippi to support voting rights and confront segregation. This is followed in August by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's challenge to the whites-only Mississippi delegation at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City. The self-evident justice of that challenge is ignored by party leaders like Johnson and Humphrey - the MFDP challenge is rejected.
A few months later, mass protests and marches erupt again in Selma Alabama. Thousands of African-Americans put their lives on the line by attempting to register to vote. They are met with savage violence from police and Klan. They face beatings, gassing, and jailings. Mass marches in Selma, Montgomery, Demopolis, Marion, Camden and elsewhere are viciously attacked. Jimmy Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb, Viola Luizzo, and Jonathan Daniels are murdered. But the people refuse to back down and the movement grows as thousands of Americans from all walks of life come to Selma in support. More than 25,000 people - of all races - march to the Statehouse in Montgomery Alabama, the "cradle of the Confederacy."

1965: Passage of Voting Rights Act.

It takes 57 days of mass protests in the streets of Washington and parliamentary struggle on the Senate floor and to break the filibuster by Southern senators determined to block passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). For just the second time in history, a filibuster on a civil-rights issue is defeated on a bitterly divided vote. The Act, which protects voting rights of all nonwhites, is passed.
Though in some respects weaker than what had been hoped for, among other provisions the VRA:

Outlaws phony voting requirements - such as "literacy tests" - designed to deny the vote to people based on their race. This applies not only to Blacks but also to Indians, Asians, and Latinos.

Authorizes the federal government to take over registration of voters in areas where local officials have consistently denied voting rights to non-whites.

Establishes that fluency in English cannot be made a requirement for voting eligibility.

Requires that states and counties with proven histories of denying the vote to nonwhites obtain prior approval (preclearance) from the Justice Department before enacting new voting-related laws or rules.

1966: Voting Rights Act takes effect.

By the end of 1965, some 250,000 new Black voters have been registered in the South. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the 13 southern states have fewer than 50 percent of African-Americans registered to vote. Over the following years, Black registration in Alabama grows more than ten-fold, from 50,000 in 1960 to more than 500,000 in 1990. And by 1990, the number of southern Black legislators has risen from 2 to 160 - an increase of 8000%.
But though the legal barriers to voter registration are weakened or overturned by the VRA, terror and economic retaliation continue for some years against citizens-of-color who try to register to vote, particularly Blacks in the South and Latinos and Native-Americans in the Southwest. The Civil Rights Movement continues the fight, with the long Meredith Mississippi March Against Fear in 1966, and mass direct-action campaigns in towns such as Grenada and Natchez MS and Bogalusa LA.

1966: Poll taxes outlawed in state elections.

The Supreme Court finally rules that the use of poll taxes in state elections violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The last remaining poll taxes are eliminated.

1970: 26th Amendment lowers voting age to 18.

Faced with widespread protests against the Vietnam war and growing resistance to the military draft, the voting age is lowered to equal the draft age. (Anti-war protests and draft resistance continue.)

1975: VRA is expanded to include language minorities.

The Act is expanded to protect the voting rights of "language minorities" (people whose primary language is not English). Based on the determination that voting discrimination against language minorities, "is pervasive and national in scope," provisions are added to ensure that non-English- speaking citizens are not denied their voting rights. Voting materials and assistance in languages other than English now have to be provided wherever needed.

1982: Voting Rights Act is strengthened.

Section 2 of the VRA is significantly expanded to make it easier to sue states and localities who violate voting rights. People no longer need to prove that the law or practice they are challenging is deliberately discriminatory. Now they need only prove it has a discriminatoryeffect.
President Ronald Reagan supports the strengthened act and enthusiastically signs it saying, " The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished." This marks the high tide of Republican support for the Voting Rights Act - and for voting rights in general.

Fundamental Victory ~ A New Threat
Prior to the VRA, the deepest purpose of gender- and race-based denial of voting rights had been to exclude women and nonwhites from the kind of political power inherent in the constitutional concept of " We the people."
So long as women and the Native-American, African-American, Latino, and Asian populations were prevented from voting they remained permanently marginalized and subservient to male and/or white America, confined in perpetuity to be subservient dependants or the hewers of wood and drawers of water for their betters.

Men held legal power over women, whites held legal power over nonwhites. Without the vote, they had no political power and no influence over the laws and policies that affected their lives. Without the vote they little recourse for redress of grievances. Without the vote they were easily subject to injustice and exploitation.

The 19th Amendment granting woman suffrage in 1920 was the capstone of a decades-long battle against the systematic disenfranchisement of an entire gender. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 overturning race-based denial of voting rights was the capstone of a decades-long battle against the systematic disenfranchisement of entire populations defined by race. Each was a decisive victory over broad systems of political, economic, social, and psychological oppression. Each was the crowning achievement of a broad mass peoples' movement.

The Republican Party turns against voting rights.

In the later part of the 20th Century, a new, politically-partisan assault on voting rights. The GoP begins adopting "wedge-issue" strategies of polarizing the electorate by politicizing control over women's bodies, fomenting race hatred, attacking nonwhite immigrants, and demonizing gays.
Where once many white southerners hated the Republican Party as the "party of Lincoln," after the 1960s they come to loathe (or are convinced to loathe) the Democratic Party as the party of "civil rights" and Black empowerment. Republicans adopt a "southern strategy" of winning elections by subtly (or not so subtly) appealing to attitudes of white-supremacy - first in the South and then across broad reaches of the country. Today in 2018, the GOP has entirely replaced the old Dixiecrat machine as the dominant party of white-supremacy.

Republican wedge-issue strategies prove effective in mobilizing white and religious-fundamentalist voters for Republican candidates and ballot propositions. But they deeply offend voters of color, liberals, secular women, the poor, college youth, and the LGBT community.

In 1994, for example, Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California wins reelection by demonizing Spanish-speaking immigrants and supporting the racist and unconstitutional Proposition 187. By doing so, he profoundly alienates the Latino population for decades to come.

Back in 1956, almost 40% of Blacks voted for Eisenhower, a Republican. Today in 2018, African-American support for GoP candidates average less than 10% - in part due to their positions on a host of economic and social issues and in part due to their racist campaign tactics such as bashing "welfare queens," TV ads like the infamous "Willie Horton" commercial, and using "law and order" as a code-word cudgel targeting African-Americans.

Rather than adopt less divisive and more inclusive politics, the Republican response to their steadily shrinking support outside of their white/male base is to suppress the voting rights, election turnout, and electoral power of groups likely to vote Democratic - particularly people of color, young people, and the poor. (As one Republican operative forthrightly explained, " Registering the poor to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals.")

Voter suppression proves effective. When elections are decided by narrow margins even a slight reduction in the number of Democratic voters able to cast ballots ensures a Republican victory.

The Voter-fraud fraud.

Before the 1960s, the rationale and justification for broadly denying voting rights to people of color was: "They're not real Americans, and they're not capable of voting intelligently, so they don't deserve to vote." After the Voting Rights Act, Republicans adopt a new rationale to justify their systematic disenfranchising of individuals likely to vote Democratic - the false claim of voter fraud.
Without any substantive evidence, Republicans and their media enablers allege that large numbers of people (particularly non-citizen immigrants) use false identification to vote illegally. And that more and more restrictive voter ID requirments and voting list purges are needed to solve this nonexistent problem.

Yet after herculean effort, in 2004 the Bush-II administration files less than 100 election fraud complaints out of 80,500 criminal cases (.001%). Similarly, in 2014, out of a billion votes cast, intense investigation finds only 31 credible instances of a voter intentionally impersonating another voter. Which is exactly what you would expect because organizing and enabling enough people to swing an election by voter impersonation is logistically difficult, expensive, and impossible to keep secret.

Actual election fraud does, of course, exist in the counting of ballots by officials, rigging of machines by political operatives, and illegally denying people the right to vote - to say nothing of campaign finance law violations. But Republicans show little interest in combating those crimes.

2000 & 2004: Black disenfranchisement in Florida.

Immediately prior to the election of 2000, Jeb Bush the Republican Governor of Florida - and brother of Republican Presidential candidate George Bush - hires a private consulting firm long associated with the Republican party to purge the Florida voting rolls of "ineligible" voters.
African-Americans strongly favor the Democratic candidate Al Gore. They are only 11% of the Florida population but 44% of the 58,000 purged voters are Black. When they arrive at the polls on election day they are told they cannot vote. This denial of African-American voting rights is the direct cause of George Bush's supposed 537 vote "victory" in Florida. It is this phony "win" (plus the votes of the 5 Republican appointees on the Supreme Court) that make him President even though Gore receives 500,000 more votes nationwide than Bush.

According to a report issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights:

Widespread voter disenfranchisement - rather than the dead-heat contest - was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election.

Violations of the VRA occurred in Florida and there was widespread denial of voting rights.

Black voters were nearly 10 times more likely than non-Black voters to have their ballots rejected.

The state's highest officials responsible for ensuring fairness in the election failed to fulfill their responsibilities and were subsequently unwilling to take responsibility.

Had tens of thousands of African-American voters not been illegally denied their right to vote, Democratic candidate Al Gore would certainly have carried the state by a comfortable margin. That would have made him President and there would have been no Iraq War.

Similarly, just before the 2004 presidential election, another 48,000 Florida voters are purged. Again, almost half of them are African-American while almost none are Hispanic because Cuban-Americans are reliable Republican voters in that state.

2008, 2012: Obama Elections.

In both 2008 and 2012, Republicans increase their efforts to disenfranchise and suppress the vote of traditionally Democratic groups. In battle-ground states such as Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, new restrictive voter-ID laws are enacted by Republican-controlled state governments. Republican voting officials purge registration lists in ways that disproportionately target Democratic constituencies and set up barriers to voter registration drives. Republican political operators engage in dirty tricks and outright frauds designed to confuse and deceive Democratic voters.
Race is the essential subtext of white opposition to Obama. In 2012, Obama runs behind his Republican opponent in every single white demographic category, even those who had previously supported Democrats such as Catholics, seniors, and white women. Yet despite Republican efforts to suppress Democratic votes and Obama's failure to win a majority of even one white demographic group, his message of hope and change inspires enough new, young, nonwhite, and previously-alienated voters to give him a solid victory.

2013: Weakening the Voting Rights Act

In 2013, the five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents vote in Shelby County v. Holder to cripple sections 4 and 5 of the VRA. The four Democratic justices dissent. Taken together, sections 4 and 5 require that states and counties with long, proven histories of race-based denial of voting rights require Justice Department (DoJ) approval for any changes in their voter registration and balloting procedures.
Within 24 hours, Texas implements new voter ID rules that had been blocked by the DoJ. An estimated 600,000 Black and Latino voters are disenfranchised. Mississippi and Alabama quickly follow Texas' lead. Within two months, North Carolina passes new voter ID laws, curtails early voting, eliminates same-day registration, prohibits counties from extending voting hours so that employees have more time to vote after their workday ends, and blocks the kind of annual voter-registration drives conducted by African-American churches and the NAACP.

Technically, the Shelby decision only applies to a handful of states and a few counties, but the Court's decision is widely seen as a signal by the five Republican justices that their decisions in future voting and election cases will be driven by partisan politics rather than ensuring fair and free elections. Republican-controlled state governments across the country immediately begin enacting a wide range of laws, regulations, and practices aimed at voters likely to support Democratic candidates.

2016: Voter suppression and foreign sabotage

In 2008 and 2012, Obama proved that an electoral coalition of nonwhites, inspired youth, the poor, secular women, and environmentalist defenders, can defeat Republican "wedge issue" strategies and deliver the White House to a Democrat.
In response, the GOP intensifies its efforts to suppress Democratic turnout. With the VRA weakened by the Supreme Court, Republican state legislatures continue to enact highly-partisan voting restrictions. By 2016, some 14 states have harsh new voting laws in place. Regarding North Carolina's new laws, a federal appeals court notes that in regards to the "voter fraud" claim, " Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assuredly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist."

In reference to a Wisconsin voter-ID law, a federal judge notes that 9 percent of all registered voters do not have the required ID and that Black voters are 50 percent more likely than whites to lack such IDs because they are less likely to drive or be able to afford the documents required to get a current ID. Most college IDs are not accepted under the law, only 3 of the 13 four- year schools in the University of Wisconsin system have acceptable IDs.

The 2016 battle between Clinton and Trump is the most bitterly contested presidential election of the 21st Century. It is also the first national campaign in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. Partisan voter suppression efforts in states controlled by the Republican Party are an order of magnitude greater than anything ever seen before. Clinton wins the popular vote by 2.8 million, but Trump wins the Electoral College (and thus the presidency) by capturing three states won by Obama - Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

A Clinton win in just two of those three swing states would put her in the White House. Trump's margin of victory in those three states is so small that many election observers believe that it is voter suppression and/or Russian interferance on his behalf that hand him the presidency.

" There's no doubt that these election changes affected the turnout among young voters, first-time voters, voters of color, and other members of the Obama coalition that overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton," concludes a Democratic campaign official.

After the election in January of 2017, the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency jointly report that the Russian government conducted a sophisticated campaign to influence the election with the dual aims of damaging Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and undermining the U.S. democratic process. " Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," they state.

Many people believe that the Trump campaign conspired and colluded with the Russians for that purpose. Russian agents are known to have also targeted election computer systems in at least 18 states. Yet Republicans in Congress do everything in their power to prevent a thorough and impartial investigation of Russian election subversion.

Shape of Modern Voter Suppression

The fiercely contested midterm elections of 2018 expose the full shape and breadth of Republican efforts to suppress Democratic voters and gerrymander the results. Voters in almost half the states face new restrictions imposed since Obama won in 2008. Some examples include:

Voter registration barriers.

It's well known that white Republicans are more likely to self-register themselves to vote than are nonwhite Democrats - in part because it's easier for them to take time off work to go down to the courthouse. The Republican-controlled Texas and Florida legislatures enact laws that severely restrict the ability of political parties, civic associations, churches, and activist groupss to engage in voter registration drives. A new North Carolina law prohibits groups such as the NAACP and churches from paying people to work on voter registration drives. National voter-organizations such as the League of Women Voters and Project Vote are forced to cease work in those state.
At the time of the 2018 midterms, there are at least 3 million eligible Latino and Black citizens in Texas who are not registered to vote. Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic senate candidate has strong support from nonwhite voters. He is defeated by 219,000 votes out of 8,300,000 cast. Most observers conclude that if just a tenth of the unregistered nonwhite voters had been able to vote he would have won.

Voter purges

Some Republican-controlled states remove many nonwhite, poor, and student citizens from voter lists using highly questionable purge techniques specifically designed to target Democratic constituencies. Nationwide almost 16 million voters are stricken from the voting rolls between 2014 and 2018 - often without any notice at all.
In Georgia, for example, Brian Kemp the Republican Secretary of State - who is himself a candidate for governor in a very tight race - oversees his own election. He uses both "Purge by Postcard" and "Exact Match" strategies to remove predominantly poor and nonwhite voters from the rolls.

Purge by Postcard. Prior to the 2018 election he sends a postcard to voters who had not voted in previous elections - the kind of postcard that is easily mistaken for junk mail. Voters who fail to fill out the card and return it to him are purged without being informed that they have lost their right to vote. Detailed studies reveal that at least 340,000 Georgia voters are incorrectly disenfranchised by this system. Statistically, it's known that poor and nonwhite voters are more likely to be caught by this trick than affluent and white voters.

Exact Match. At his urging, Georgia enacts a law requiring that the hand-written information that voters fill out on their registration form exactly match existing state records in every single detail. To check that match, state employees read information on the form and type it into a computer system. If the voter - or the typist - makes an error of omitting a middle initial, mispelling an unusual name or street address, or misplacing a hyphen, the voter's registration is rejected by the computer. Prior to the 2018 vote, an estimated 53,000 voters are purged using this method. Some 70% of them are African-American even though Blacks comprise only 32% of the state's population.

Kemp who is white goes on to defeat Stacey Abrams, his Black opponent by 58,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast. Had poor and nonwhite voters not been disenfranchized by Purge by Postcard and Exact Match, Abrams would almost certainly have won.

Felon disenfranchisement

The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its people than any other industrialized nation. From the time of Reagan's innauguration in 1981 (followed by the Republican Party's "wedge issue" strateies of demonizing nonwhites as criminals), America's incarceration rate has increased by 252%. Nonwhites and the poor are far more likely to be sent to prison than whites or the affluent.
Once ex-convicts are released from prison they are expected to obey all laws and pay their taxes, yet many states permanently bar them from voting for the legislators and ballot propositions that make those laws and the sheriffs and judges who enforce them. Nationwide as of 2016, more than 6 million citizens - 2.5% of the voting age population - are not allowed to vote because of a prior criminal conviction. This practice disenfranchises more than 7% of African- Americans yet less than 2% of whites.

In Florida, the worst example of felon disenfranchisement, an estimated 1.6 million ex-convicts cannot vote. That amounts to 10% of the total statewide population and a whopping 21% of Florida's African-Americans. In 2018, the Republican candidate for Senate defeats the Democrat by 12,000 votes and the white Republican candidate for governor defeats an African American candidate by 34,000 votes - both out of more than 8.1 million cast. Had nonwhite felons not been disproportinatly disenfranchised, both the Democratic candidates would probably have won.

Voter ID laws

After Shelby County v. Holder weakens the VRA, Republicans in a number of states quickly pass laws requiring voters to present a photo-IDs before they can cast their ballots. The partisan nature of the ID requirements is often blatant. For example, Texas law includes concealed carry gun permits as a valid form of voter-ID, but not university student ID cards. Statistically, those who carry concealed weapons are more likely to be NRA members and vote Republican than are college youth who even in Texas tend to favor Democrats.
In most cases, however, the partisan nature of vote ID laws is simply inherent in demographic realities because they disproportionately impact those who are more likely to vote for Democrats. For example, they discourage voting by the elderly and poor who are less likely to own a car or posses a valid drivers license and often cannot afford the cost of the alternate photo ID options offered. By some estimates, while 10% of all Americans do not have the required IDs, 15% of low-income voters don't, 18% of seniors do not, and 25% of African-Americans don't.

Most of these voter ID states now require a birth certificate and proof of residence at a particular address to obtain a drivers license. Older African- Americans born in the Jim Crow South were often never issued a birth certificate and some never had their birth officially recorded at all. The poor who might from time to time be homeless on the streets are frequently unable to provide utility bills, apartment leases or other proofs of residence acceptable to state officials. Nor can many students who are housed in dorms, or move frequently, or who "crash" with friends.

Suppressing voter turnout.

Most democratic nations hold elections on Sundays or holidays when people with jobs can more easily vote. That's not the case in America. Voting precincts are based on where you live, not where you work. While some states require employers to grant hourly-wage workers time off to vote, most don't which means such folk have to make it from work to their polling station before it closes. In some states the polls close at 6pm making it physically impossible for employees with long commutes to vote.
After the Shelby ruling, states and counties with Republican election officials begin reducing the number of polling places in nonwhite and working class areas. In one Black-majority county in Georgia in 2018, officials attempted to close seven of the nine precincts. Fewer voting locations inevitably results in longer lines at the remaining locations and it's well known that long lines before and after work discourage voting. Similar restrictions and reductions are imposed on early voting. As a result, in 2018 many voters are forced to travel long distances and wait for hours in order to cast their ballots.

In those southern states that do allow early voting on Sundays, African-American churches have traditionally organized souls to the polls events in which Black churchgoers go to vote together after services. In 2012, almost 39% of North Carolina's early voters and 34% of same-day registrants were Black. Prior to the 2018 election, that state eliminated same-day registration and Sunday voting. As intended, these and other steps taken by the Republican-controlled legislature put a brake on African-American participation.

Blocking student voters

Young people face a future dominated by global warming, shrinking job opportunities, and skyrocketing college tuition. So they tend to vote for Democrats or anti-establishment candidates. Republican operatives and legislators are well aware of that reality and act accordingly. State voter ID laws, for example, often won't accept a college ID card, instead they require an in-state driver's license which urban students often neither have nor need. Or they require a utility bill or apartment lease as proof of residency which those living in dormitories cannot provide.
Many colleges are located in small and medium sized towns that lean conservative, so local power-structures prefer that those young citizens vote in their parent's home district where they can't affect local races. Yet it's local ordinances, taxes, and police practices that directly affect their lives, so most students prefer to register and vote where they are actually living and working for most of the year - which is often made difficult by county officials. In one small Texas town, for example, just before the 2018 vote Republican officials switch the voting precinct for half the students at a historically Black college to prevent them from voting in a Republican-held district. When a Democratic campaign staffer tries to challenge the change, he is arrested on trumped up charges.

Tricks, deceit & manipulation.

Political "dirty tricks" are increasingly being used by both parties to suppress voter turnout of those who tend to favor the other side. Examples include false notification that polling places have been changed, directing voters to phony email or web addresses where they can supposedly vote online, conducting voter-registration drives and then failing to turn in the forms of voters who registered for the opposing party, mass-mailings of counterfeit absentee ballots with false return addresses, and so on.
Back in 2012, Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, won a close Senate race in North Dakota by less than 3,000 votes. Strong support from Native-Americans gave her the margin of victory. The dirt roads and trails on indian reservations have no names, and the dwellings, trailers, and RVs where tribe members reside have no numbers, so for generations they have picked up their mail at the post office or traditional trading post.

State tax agencies, the IRS, Social Security, VA, and other government agencies have never had a problem with that. But after Heitkamp's 2012 win, Republicans enact a new voter ID law requiring street names and house numbers, so that Indians cannot use their drivers licenses as voter ID - yet whites can. Heitkamp is defeated in her reelection effort.

Gerrymandering.

The boundaries of legislative districts are usually redrawn every 10 years after the Census, most recently in 2010. "Gerrymandering" refers to the dominant political party drawing district boundaries to favor their candidates, cripple their opponents, and circumvet the will of the electorate.
After the 2010 Census, the Republican Party launches "Project Redmap" and then "Redmap 2020" to take control of legislatures in states where partisan politics govern how districts are drawn. Using $30 million in dark money, they flip close to 1,000 seats in state government from Democrat to Republican. Those Republican-controlled legislatures then use their power to draw nakedly partisan congressional and state districts.

Project Redmap is successful. In 2012, for example, Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives received 1.1 million more votes than the Republicans - but the GoP nets 33 more seats than the Democrats.

In 2018, Republican gerrymandering still rules the electoral map, favoring Republicans, harming Democrats, and thwarting the will of the voters. For example:

In Wisconsin, Democratic candidates for state assembly win 54% of the total vote but end up with only 37% of the seats - Republicans lose the votes but keep control.

Two other heavily gerrymandered states are Ohio and North Carolina. In those states the 2018 popular congressional vote for the House of Representatives is split roughly 50-50 but the Republicans walk away with 75% of the seats in both states.

Immigration reform and path to citizenship.

As of 2016 there are roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants living and working in the U.S. They comprise a bit over 3% of the population and the great majority of them work and pay taxes while raising their families here. Most of them are nonwhite. Few are criminals.
For years there have been political movements and proposed legislation to provide a path for undocumented workers to become citizens (and, therefore, voters). The common wisdom is that if these millions were eligible to vote, most of them would vote Democratic.

It is no surprise then that the Republican Party consistently and adamantly blocks all efforts towards allowing any of them to become voting citizens. They claim they want to "protect American jobs" yet they enthusiastically support government regulations, policies, and tax incentives that encourage corporations to transfer jobs out of the country to low-wage nations. Most unbiased observers conclude that partisan politics and wedge-issue incitement are the real reason they oppose any path to citizenship for those they deem "illegal."

Tomorrow: The fight to have our votes count.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries we fought to expand the right to vote. That struggle continues.
In the 21st Century, however, we must also fight to have our votes count for something. Not the right to have our votes counted - though as we've seen in Florida and elsewhere that too may be a crucial issue - but rather the right to have our votes mean something.

The best democracy that money can buy. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court decreed in 2010 that unlimited secret funding for political ads and manipulation is a form of constitutionally protected "free speech." This decision dramatically shifted electoral influence away from parties and political organizations by allowing wealthy individuals and corporations to buy the election results they want with a flood of cash. Huge corporate campaign contributions given directly to candidates or through secretive Political Action Committees (PACs) have become a legally-sanctioned form of bribery.

Partisan Disempowerment. When urban areas under Democratic control enact rent control, minimum wage, or environmental or laws, Republican state legislatures strip from local government the authority to do so. Starting with North Carolina in 2016, Republican-controlled legislatures also strip power from Governors and other state-wide offices when Democrats win those offices. In 2018, for example, after Democrats win the governor and attorney-general races in Wisconsin the Republican controlled legislature enacts 141 pages of new laws stripping those offices of traditional powers and specifically preventing them from carrying out campaign promises around welfare, health care, economic development and voting rights. Republicans in Michigan pass similar laws to cripple incoming Democratic office-holders.

Un-elected global government. As more and more of us have won the right to vote, the power to make critical decisions has been moved out of the hands of elected local, state, and federal officials and into the grasp of un-elected global commissions appointed and controlled by multi-national corporations. Today, many of the vital decisions that affect our lives - decisions on the economy, worker-safety, communications, trade, jobs, environment, privacy, copyrights, and so much more - are being made by world treaty organizations such as the WTO, GATT, NAFTA, TRIPS, FTAA, and so on. Voters have no direct influence on these bodies which debate and decide in secret and issue decrees that cannot be appealed or amended. Their decisions over-ride those made by our elected officials at all levels.

The struggle continues...

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. While commercial use or republication is prohibited, individuals and organizations engaged in social justice work who wish to copy and distribute this work may do so and ask for, and use, donations from readers on a nonprofit basis to cover their expenses. Permission to quote from this work, with attribution, is also granted. Published by the Civil Rights Movement Veterans Website.

By Bruce Hartford

First Edition, 2004
Second Edition, 2014
Third Edition, 2018

Front cover photo by: Bruce Davidson
Rear photo by: James Karales

Bosnian translation of this article.

Webspinner: webmaster@crmvet.org
(Labor donated)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
student nonviolent coordinating 
committee

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
national association for the 
advancement of colored people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
southern conference 
education committee

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Civil Rights Movement -- Voting Rights in America ~ Two Centuries of Struggle

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NOTE This brief time-line describes an American history of oppression, persecution, and discrimination in regards to voting rights. But in all of the events described here, those affected were not submissive or passive victims, - rather they fought for their rights with whatever means they had.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You don't have to look hard to see evidence of political polarization - just watch cable news, listen to talk radio or follow social-media debates. Indeed, a new Pew Research Center report finds that Americans are more ideologically polarized today than they've been in at least two decades. Their representatives in Congress are divided too, and have been pulling apart since the days of M*A*S*H and Billy Beer.

With Democrats and Republicans more ideologically separated than ever before, compromises have become scarcer and more difficult to achieve, contributing to the current Congress' inability to get much of consequence done. But going beyond anecdotal evidence to examine congressional polarization more rigorously can be tricky.

Fortunately, political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal have developed a widely accepted metric, DW-NOMINATE, that places every senator and representative on the same set of ideological scales. Using their data, it's clear that the congressional parties, after decades of relatively little polarization, began pulling apart in the mid-1970s. Today, they say, "Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the end of Reconstruction."

The researchers aggregated roll call votes to locate each member of Congress, from 1789 to the present day, on a two-dimensional grid. One dimension represents the traditional liberal-conservative spectrum; the second picks up regional issue differences, such as the split between Northern and Southern Democrats over civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. As Poole and Rosenthal note, those formerly significant regional distinctions have declined in importance - or, more precisely, merged into the overall liberal-conservative divide: "Voting in Congress is now almost purely one-dimensional - [political ideology] accounts for about 93 percent of roll call voting choices in the 113th House and Senate." So we used just the ideological dimension in our analysis.

We took the vote scores for every senator and representative in five Congresses, one in each of the past five decades, and ordered them from most liberal (scores of -1 to 0) to most conservative (0 to +1). Then we sorted them by party to see how much overlap - if any - there was between Democrats and Republicans (for simplicity, we excluded the handful of independents).

In 1973-74, there was in fact substantial overlap. In the House, 240 members scored in between the most conservative Democrat (John Rarick of Louisiana) and the most liberal Republican (Charles Whalen of Ohio); 29 senators scored between New Jersey's Clifford Case (most liberal Republican) and James Allen of Alabama (most conservative Democrat).

A decade later, though, that had already begun to change. By 1983-84, only 10 senators and 66 representatives (except for Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), who scored more conservative than every single Republican) fell between their chambers' most liberal Republican and most conservative Democrat. By 1993-94, the overlap between the most conservative Democrat and the most liberal Republican had fallen to nine House members and three senators. By 2011-12 there was no overlap at all in either chamber.

What's happened? In large part, the disappearance of moderate-to-liberal Republicans (mainly in the Northeast) and conservative Democrats (primarily in the South). Since the 1970s, the congressional parties have sorted themselves both ideologically and geographically. The combined House delegation of the six New England states, for instance, went from 15 Democrats and 10 Republicans in 1973-74 to 20 Democrats and two Republicans in 2011-12. In the South the combined House delegation essentially switched positions: from 91 Democrats and 42 Republicans in 1973-74 to 107 Republicans and 47 Democrats in 2011-12.

Political scientists debate whether polarization in Congress preceded or followed polarization among the wider public, and our data (which begins in 1994) won't resolve that. One thing is clear, though: When a polarized Congress represents a polarized public, not much gets done legislatively. Through the end of May, the current Congress had enacted 89 pieces of substantive legislation (based on the methodology we've employed in prior Fact Tank posts) since it opened in January 2013. A decade ago, at the equivalent point in its term, Congress had enacted almost twice as many substantive laws.

Historically, compromise has been key to getting legislation passed. But polarized senators and representatives - reluctant to compromise with the other side to start with - won't get much pressure from the partisans back in their home states. According to our study, while 56% of Americans say they prefer politicians who are willing to compromise, in practice both across-the-board conservatives and across-the-board liberals say the end result of compromise should be that their side gets more of what it wants.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The polarized Congress of today has its roots in the 1970s

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You don't have to look hard to see evidence of political polarization - just watch cable news, listen to talk radio or follow social-media debates. Indeed, a new Pew Research Center report finds that Americans are more ideologically polarized today than they've been in at least two decades.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.

He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.

Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.

Lucretia Mott
Harriet Cady Eaton
Margaret Pryor
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Eunice Newton Foote
Mary Ann M'Clintock
Margaret Schooley
Martha C. Wright
Jane C. Hunt
Amy Post
Catherine F. Stebbins
Mary Ann Frink
Lydia Mount
Delia Matthews
Catharine C. Paine
Elizabeth W. M'Clintock
Malvina Seymour
Phebe Mosher
Catherine Shaw
Deborah Scott
Sarah Hallowell
Mary M'Clintock
Mary Gilbert
Sophrone Taylor
Cynthia Davis
Hannah Plant
Lucy Jones
Sarah Whitney
Mary H. Hallowell
Elizabeth Conklin
Sally Pitcher
Mary Conklin
Susan Quinn
Mary S. Mirror
Phebe King
Julia Ann Drake
Charlotte Woodward
Martha Underhill
Dorothy Matthews
Eunice Barker
Sarah R. Woods
Lydia Gild
Sarah Hoffman
Elizabeth Leslie
Martha Ridley
Rachel D. Bonnel
Betsey Tewksbury
Rhoda Palmer
Margaret Jenkins
Cynthia Fuller
Mary Martin
P.A. Culvert
Susan R. Doty
Rebecca Race
Sarah A. Mosher
Mary E. Vail
Lucy Spalding
Lavinia Latham
Sarah Smith
Eliza Martin
Maria E. Wilbur
Elizabeth D. Smith
Caroline Barker
Ann Porter
Experience Gibbs
Antoinette E. Segur
Hannah J. Latham
Sarah Sisson

The following are the names of the gentlemen present in favor of the movement:

Richard P. Hunt
Samuel D. Tillman
Justin Williams
Elisha Foote
Frederick Douglass
Henry W. Seymour
Henry Seymour
David Salding
William G. Barker
Elias J. Doty
John Jones
William S. Dell
James Mott
William Burroughs
Robert Smalldridge
Jacob Matthews
Charles L. Hoskins
Thomas M'Clintock
Saron Phillips
Jacob Chamberlain
Jonathan Metcalf
Nathan J. Milliken
S.E. Woodworth
Edward F. Underhill
George W. Pryor
Joel Bunker
Isaac Van Tassel
Thomas Dell
E.W. Capron
Stephen Shear
Henry Hatley
Azaliah Schooley

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Declaration of Sentiments - Women's Rights National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

# data[].attributes.headline
Alaska ballot measure rank choice voting

# data[].attributes.subject
Alaska ballot measure rank choice voting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Alaska Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative may appear on the ballot in Alaska as an indirect initiated state statute on November 3, 2020.

The initiative would change Alaska's electoral system to a ranked-choice voting system.

Text of measure

The full text of the initiative can be found here.

Background

Ranked-choice voting

A ranked-choice voting system (RCV) is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority. This system is sometimes referred to as an instant runoff voting system.

How ranked-choice voting works

Broadly speaking, the ranked-choice voting process (sometimes referred to as instant runoff voting) unfolds as follows:

1. Voters rank the candidates for a given office by preference on their ballots.

2. If a candidate wins an outright majority of first-preference votes (i.e., 50 percent plus one), he or she will be declared the winner.

3. If, on the other hand, no candidates win an outright majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated.

4. All first-preference votes for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots.

5. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won an outright majority of the adjusted voters.

6. The process is repeated until a candidate wins a majority of votes cast.

Ranked-choice voting in the United States

As of 2019, one state (Maine) had implemented RCV at the state level. Seven states contained jurisdictions that had implemented RCV at the local (e.g., city or county) level. Another five states contained jurisdictions that had adopted but not yet implemented RCV in local elections. See the map and table below for further details.

Maine Question 5 (2016)

On November 8, 2016, voters approved a ballot initiative- Maine Question 5-to establish a first-in-the-nation statewide system of ranked-choice voting. Voters approved the initiative 52.12 to 47.88 percent. Support for the initiative was stronger in southern coastal Maine, whereas the counties along the state's northern border with Canada voted against the measure.

Question 5 defined ranked-choice voting as "the method of casting and tabulating votes in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, tabulation proceeds in sequential rounds in which last-place candidates are defeated and the candidate with the most votes in the final round is elected."

Path to the ballot

The state process

In Alaska, the number of signatures required for an indirect initiated state statute is equal to 10 percent of the votes cast in the preceding gubernatorial election. Alaska also has a signature distribution requirement, which requires that signatures equal to 7 percent of the vote in the last general election must be collected in each of three-fourths of the 40 Alaska House of Representatives districts. Petitions are allowed to circulate for 365 days from the date the lieutenant governor prepares the petitions. Signatures must be submitted before the start of the state legislature's regular session. The regular session begins each year in mid-January.

The requirements to get an indirectly initiated state statute certified for the 2020 ballot:

Signatures: 28,501 valid signatures are required.

Deadline: The deadline to submit signatures is before the legislative session begins in mid-January 2020 or 365 days after the lieutenant governor prepared petitions, whichever comes first.

If the lieutenant governor certifies enough signatures as valid, the Alaska State Legislature can approve the indirect initiative or equivalent legislation, keeping the measure off the ballot. Otherwise, the initiative is certified to appear on the ballot for the first statewide election 120 days after the legislature's adjournment.

Details about this initiative

Alaskans for Better Elections submitted this initiative on July 3, 2019. The group's officers include former independent Rep. Jason Grenn and former mayor of Juneau Bruce Botelho (D).

Attorney General Kevin Clarkson submitted an opinion to the lieutenant governor recommending he decline to certify the initiative for signature gathering on the grounds that it violates the single-subject rule. Proponent Jason Grenn said the group would appeal the lieutenant governor's decision.

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Alaska Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative (2020) - Ballotpedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Alaska Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative may appear on the ballot in Alaska as an indirect initiated state statute on November 3, 2020. The initiative would change Alaska's electoral system to a ranked-choice voting system. The full text of the initiative can be found here.

# data[].attributes.headline
Corruption in Election System - TED Talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Corruption in Election System - TED Talk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | Lawrence Lessig

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That's the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig.

# data[].attributes.headline
Great article on disadvantages of amending process

# data[].attributes.subject
Great article on disadvantages of amending process

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In his new book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, John Paul Stevens argues for amending the Constitution to promote democracy and rights. Stevens, who served on the Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010, knows a lot about the nation's founding document and thinks that it needs a major retooling. He's right that there are many problems with it. But he's wrong to think that amending the Constitution is the solution. He's wrong because it is nearly impossible to enact new amendments. That is the problem that needs a solution.

Stevens wants to abolish the death penalty, allow for more gun control and campaign finance regulation, and give judges the power to block gerrymandering. He would also allow the federal government to order around state officials and enable people to sue state governments for damages. The six amendments he proposes would overturn Supreme Court decisions, many of which Stevens dissented from when he served on the court.

In most countries, we could seriously consider the changes to the Constitution that Stevens proposes-or, for that matter, a different set of amendments from the Tea Party. But in our country, we can't. Any proposal to amend the Constitution is idle because it's effectively impossible.

The problem starts with Article 5 of the Constitution. It provides that an amendment can be proposed either by a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate or by a convention, called into being by Congress, after a request from two-thirds of the states. That's version A and version B of step one. If an amendment makes it through either one, then comes step two: ratification by three-quarters of the states. In other words, an amendment requires a supermajority twice-the pig must pass through two pythons. By contrast, ordinary legislation requires the approval of a simple majority in each house.

The founders made the amendment process difficult because they wanted to lock in the political deals that made ratification of the Constitution possible. Moreover, they recognized that, for a government to function well, the ground rules should be stable. But they also understood that the people will need to change those ground rules as new challenges and problems surface with the passage of time. They didn't mean for the dead hand of the past to block necessary progress.

But the founders blundered. They made passing an amendment too hard. In the 220-plus years since ratification of the Constitution, more than 11,000 amendments have been proposed, but only 27 have been enacted. The first 10 amendments were added immediately to appease critics of the Constitution during the ratification debates. The three critical post-Civil War amendments (13 th, 14 th, and 15 th), which expanded individual rights, are also a special case because the Southern states were coerced into ratifying them. From 1870 to today, only 12 amendments have been enacted. And since 1971, only a single amendment has been ratified-a trivial change that prohibits Congress from giving itself a raise that takes effect before the following election-and that ratification took place 203 years after the proposed amendment was submitted to the states in 1789.

Still, how do we know that amendment is too hard rather than just hard enough? One reason is that the cumbersome national amendment process in the United States makes us an outlier. Most liberal democracies-including the nice, stable ones in Western Europe-amend their constitutions with great frequency. Germany amends its Basic Law almost once per year, and France a bit more than once every two years. Indeed, most states in the U.S. amend their constitutions every couple of years. Many have completely replaced their original founding documents. The procedures for amendment in states and most liberal democracies are much easier than they are for the U.S Constitution. For example, in Germany, an amendment requires a two-thirds majority in each House, and that's it. In all these cases, no one complains about the lack of constitutional stability.

In setting the bar for amendment so high, the Framers didn't foresee that as the country became more populous and diverse, it would become harder for people to reach the near-consensus required for change. The Senate began with 20 members; now it has 100. The House increased from 59 to 435. And the U.S. population has increased from 4 million to more than 300 million. The clubby atmosphere at the founding, in which horse-trading was easy, has given way to a wildly heterogeneous political environment where mutual suspicion prevails. The difficulty of forging coalitions that can overcome the strict voting thresholds for amendment in Article 5 has increased exponentially. In the mid-19 th century, many people regarded the Constitution as an " agreement with hell" because it permitted slavery, and in the early 20 th century, there was a widespread view that the Constitution was drafted to advance the economic interests of the political elites. These attitudes sparked significant constitutional amendment. Today, the Constitution is no longer treated as a fallible legal instrument that must be updated to keep with the times. It is a totem.

The easiest way to see the problem is to observe that no serious political movements that seek constitutional amendment have existed in years. Amendment proposals today are symbolic; no one takes them seriously. The last constitutional amendment that kindled serious public debate was the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. Asked recently what amendment she would make to the Constitution, that's the one Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg chose. But it was Justice Antonin Scalia who gave the broader and better answer-amend the process of amendment, to make it easier. According to the Legal Times, "[Scalia] once calculated what percentage of the population could prevent an amendment to the Constitution and found it was less than 2 percent. 'It ought to be hard, but not that hard,' Scalia said."

Because Article 5 is a dead letter, people must find different ways to change the Constitution. Mainly, they entreat the Supreme Court to do so. But because the Supreme Court cannot itself amend the Constitution, these entreaties take the form of begging the court to "interpret" the Constitution in a new way. That's why people hire lawyers to formulate their proposals as already reflected in the Constitution rather than argue that the Constitution got the position wrong and so should be changed.

In recent years, the court has changed the rules on gay marriage, gun rights, and campaign finance. Since the Supreme Court rarely overturns its precedents without public support, indirectly "We the People" can still, in a sense, change the Constitution. But the emphasis is on "indirectly." If the sitting justices are not ideologically receptive to needed changes in constitutional rules, working change through the court means electing presidents and senators who will nominate and confirm justices with the desired ideological views, and also mobilizing popular opinion against targeted laws so that challenges to them can reach the court.

This is a broken system. Is there a solution? Sure, as Scalia said, all we need to do is change the rules in Article 5. The only problem is that this would require-an amendment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The U.S. Constitution Is Impossible to Amend. Blame the Founders.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In his new book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution , John Paul Stevens argues for amending the Constitution to promote democracy and rights. Stevens, who served on the Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010, knows a lot about the nation's founding document and thinks that it needs a major retooling.

# data[].attributes.headline
Brennan Center listing of Gerrymandering cases

# data[].attributes.subject
Brennan Center listing of Gerrymandering cases

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
United States Supreme Court (No. 16-1161)
The plaintiffs, 12 Wisconsin residents who historically have voted Democratic, filed a lawsuit on July 8, 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin challenging the legislative district plan drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature following the 2010 Census. They argue the map is unconstitutional because it discriminates against Democratic candidates and voters on the basis of their political beliefs, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and because it burdens their First Amendment rights of association and speech.

Earlier this year, on April 7, the three-judge federal panel ruled unanimously to allow the case to proceed to trial, marking the first time in three decades that partisan gerrymandering claims survived a motion to dismiss. The trial was held in late-May and posed two major questions for the court. The first was whether the Wisconsin state house plan had been drawn with discriminatory partisan intent. Second, assuming there was intent, the trial turned to whether the maps had a constitutionally discriminatory effect - an issue that courts have thus far been unable to develop a simple test to resolve.

The trial provided a key initial test for the efficiency gap, a proposed standard for determining discriminatory effect that counts the number of votes each party wastes in an election to determine whether either party enjoyed a systematic advantage in turning votes into seats.

On November 21, 2016, the panel issued a 2-1 opinion holding that Wisconsin's legislative plan was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander because it resulted in excessive partisan asymmetry that could not be explained by neutral factors such as political topgraphy. Shortly thereafter, the panel ordered the Wisconsin Legislature put a remedial plan in place by November 1, 2017.

Wisconsin filed an appeal on February 24, 2017, asking the Supreme Court to review the decision striking down the map.

Key pleadings for Gill v. Whitford can be found here.

Benisek v. Lamone (formerly known as Shapiro v. McManus)
United States District Court for the District of Maryland (No. 13-cv-3233)
A group of Maryland voters filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on November 5, 2013 challenging the congressional redistricting plan enacted by the Democratic-controlled Maryland General Assembly following the 2010 Census.

In their amended complaint, plaintiffs claimed that Maryland's 6th Congressional District was a partisan gerrymander that violated their representational rights guaranteed by Article I of the U.S. Constitution and their First Amendment right of political association. Until the 2011 redistricting, the Sixth District routinely sent a Republican to Congress; afterward, the district flipped, going to the Democratic side. Under the plaintiffs' theory of the case, the Democratic-controlled legislature engineered this flip in an attempt to punish Republican voters for casting their ballots in favor of their preferred Republican candidates.

On August 24, 2016, the panel denied the state defendants' motion to dismiss in a 2-1 decision, holding that the plaintiffs had adequately alleged a claim that they had been disfavored and punished for exercising their First Amendment rights. The parties are now proceeding with discovery, with a trial in the case expected in late summer or early fall 2017.

Key pleadings for Benisek v. Lamone can be found here.

Harris v. Cooper
United States Supreme Court (No. 16-166)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Common Cause v. Rucho
United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina (No. 1:16-CV-1026)
________________________________________________________________________________________________

League of Women Voters v. Rucho
United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina (No. 1:16-CV-1164)
Race and politics collided in North Carolina this cycle, presenting courts with both racial and partisan gerrymandering claims.

On October 24, 2013, plaintiffs in Harris v. McCrory filed suit alleging that North Carolina packed African-American voters into the 1st and 12th Congressional Districts when it redrew its congressional district lines in 2011. The district lines, they argued, diluted African-American voting power and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In early February, the three-judge panel agreed and struck down the state's congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

After the ruling, the state defendants appealed. Meanwhile, the North Carolina legislature held an emergency special session where it redrew the map. However, in redrawing maps, legislative leaders adopted rules that required proposed maps to maintain the state's partisan balance of 10 Republican and 3 Democratic seats. A key legislative leader stated on the floor that, "I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law." The challengers filed objections to the remedial plan claiming the new map was doubly defective. Not only did the legislature fail to fix the deficiencies with the original map, they argued, but it also added an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander to the still-existing racial gerrymander.

The court denied the plaintiffs' objections on June 2, 2016. In the short eight-page opinion, the court said its "hands appear to be tied" given the lack of a judicially management standard to evaluate partisan gerrymandering claims. However, the court emphasized that its ruling was not an endorsement of, nor does it prevent further challenges to, the state's remedial plan.

The plaintiffs have appealed the district court's ruling on the 2016 remedial map to the Supreme Court. The Court is expected to decide some time before June whether to accept the case for argument. It is possible, however, that the Court will delay any decision or action on the partisan gerrymandering claims in Harris until it has decided the state defendants' racial gerrymandering appeal.

In the meantime, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters have filed suits in district court also challenging the constitutionality of the 2016 remedial plan. Both cases have been consolidated and the trial is scheduled to begin on June 26, 2017.

Key pleadings for Harris v. Cooper can be found here.

Key pleadings for Common Cause v. Rucho can be found here.

Key pleadings for the League of Women Voters v. Rucho can be found here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
United States Supreme Court (No. 16-1161) The plaintiffs, 12 Wisconsin residents who historically have voted Democratic, filed a lawsuit on July 8, 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin challenging the legislative district plan drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature following the 2010 Census.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The culture wars of recent decades have largely pitted a growing secularization of America against its more traditional Christian culture. The secular left has sought to push religion out of the public square-whether from schools, or over public monuments, or in public expressions (coins, pledges, holidays). Meanwhile the religious right has pushed back, becoming a major political and legal force. The culture wars are a series of battles in elections, legislatures, executive offices and the courts.

But a new and important battleground is emerging as a clash between the rights to the free exercise of religion and free speech of the First Amendment to the Constitution with the growing civil rights protections afforded under the equal protection clause of the 14 th Amendment. Battles over conflicting constitutional rights are especially difficult, with few easy answers and none that will satisfy everyone.

For example, two federal departments recently announced changes in federal policy that enhance religious rights, with the Department of Health and Human Services rolling back a requirement that employers must offer birth control coverage in their health insurance plans if they violate religious principles. Meanwhile the Justice Department eased Obama-era limitations that prevented religious organizations from faith-based preferences in employment decisions. House Speaker Paul Ryan called the changes "a landmark day for religious liberty" but others said they were a license to discriminate. A liberal president had pushed in one direction and a more conservative administration pushed back.

A similar issue is raised in a case to be heard before the US Supreme Court this fall involving a Colorado baker who refused to decorate a wedding cake for a gay marriage because it was against his religious beliefs. The baker asserts his 1 st Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and speech while a state law banning discrimination by public businesses claims this amounts to civil rights discrimination. The lower court decisions have gone against the baker, but the Trump Justice Department has filed a brief in favor of his free expression of religious principles. Many predict a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, with Justice Kennedy left to choose between two rights he favors: gay marriage under the 14 th Amendment and free speech under the 1st.

Once the Supreme Court makes a decision such as in the Obergefell gay marriage case, the implications can play out for years in the courts. A case in Arkansas, for example, raised the question whether listing both same-sex parents on the birth certificate was legally required (no, said the Arkansas Supreme Court, later reversed by the US Supreme Court). The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled that same-sex spouses of government employees need not be provided benefits.

The clash between the 1 st and 14 th Amendments in these matters is more of a dilemma to be managed than a problem to be solved. Both religious and free speech rights are fundamental and receive special protection under the 1 st Amendment. Gay and transgender rights are newer but nevertheless protected under the 14 th Amendment now. Given the conflict between two core rights, neither can be absolute-some balance or accommodation must be found.

There are plenty of bad ideas out there for managing this dilemma. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni's suggestion was that Christians must now "[bow] to the enlightenments of modernity," effectively turning their backs on an ancient yet living faith. On the other hand, it should not be the case that a Christian running an ordinary business may decide to exclude certain classes of customers.

Although it would be better for society as a whole if the people and their elected representatives, rather than the courts, were creating new civil rights, in the end perhaps only courts can provide the delicate balance needed to manage the dilemma between 1 st Amendment and 14 th Amendment rights. It will be a mighty task-we'll have a chance to see this fall whether the high court is up to it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Culture War's Latest Battlefront: The 1st Versus The 14th Amendments

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The culture wars have moved to a new battleground, with 1st Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and free speech pitted against new civil rights under the 14th Amendment. This is a dilemma to be managed, not a problem to be solved, and it will be a huge challenge for the courts.

# data[].attributes.body
Formation of Electoral College.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Notes, laws, questions, arguments, links, and background information concerning the Electoral College and the selection of the president of the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A case in which the Court held that Alabama's apportionment of the state legislature was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because representation was not based on population of counties.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Supreme Court . Interactive Timeline | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Published in December 2006. THE SUPREME COURT is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York. © 2007 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use | PBS Privacy Policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amending the Constitution: The Meaning of Article V

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Article V: Amending the Constitution The issue: What is the process by which the Constitution may be amended? Are there subject matter limitations on amendments? Can courts review the validity of constitutional amendments? What is the effect of amendments on previously ratified constitutional provisions?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Washington's Farewell Address 1796

1796

Friends and Citizens:

The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.

I beg you, at the same time, to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country; and that in withdrawing the tender of service, which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.

The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence, impelled me to abandon the idea.

I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety, and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that, in the present circumstances of our country, you will not disapprove my determination to retire.

The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied that if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

In looking forward to the moment which is intended to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country for the many honors it has conferred upon me; still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me; and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by services faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.

Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured ? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?

To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.

How far in the discharge of my official duties I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them.

In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my proclamation of the twenty-second of April, I793, is the index of my plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice, and by that of your representatives in both houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or divert me from it.

After deliberate examination, with the aid of the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take, and was bound in duty and interest to take, a neutral position. Having taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain it, with moderation, perseverance, and firmness.

The considerations which respect the right to hold this conduct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right, so far from being denied by any of the belligerent powers, has been virtually admitted by all.

The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.

The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With me a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.

Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Avalon Project - Washington's Farewell Address 1796

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Washington's Farewell Address 1796 Friends and Citizens: The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with

# data[].attributes.headline
There should be a National Right to Vote Amendment

# data[].attributes.subject
There should be a National Right to Vote Amendment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Voting is an American principle and a basic democratic right that should be protected, promoted, and practiced, which is why many people are surprised to learn that the U.S. Constitution provides no explicit right to vote. This leaves voting rights vulnerable to the whims of politicians, and some citizens with fewer rights than others.

More than a decade ago, FairVote became the leading institutional voice calling for the establishment of an explicit individual right to vote in the U.S. Constitution. We believe that a grassroots movement to establish such an amendment would go a long way in ending the "voting wars" that plague us today. FairVote continues to serve as a trusted resource in support of activists, organizations, and elected officials working toward a right to vote amendment. Through our Promote Our Vote project, we work to build widespread support for a right to vote amendment, while advocating for pro-suffrage innovations at the local level.

Why We Need a Right to Vote Amendment

Even as the rising American electorate gains momentum, new regressive laws, rulings, and maneuvers are threatening voting rights without facing the strict scrutiny that would come with an affirmative right to vote in the Constitution.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), stripping the Justice Department of the powers it had for five decades to curb racial discrimination in voting. The Election Assistance Commission was left without commissioners for years and frequently faces bills in Congress that would end its existence entirely. Many schools skip civics education, contributing to the decline in voter turnout in local and primary elections.

Enshrining an explicit right to vote in the Constitution would guarantee the voting rights of every citizen of voting age, ensure that every vote is counted correctly, and defend against attempts to effectively disenfranchise eligible voters. It would empower Congress to enact minimum electoral standards to guarantee a higher degree of legitimacy, inclusivity, and consistency across the nation, and give our courts the authority to keep politicians in check when they try to game the vote for partisan reasons.

The Constitution has been amended 27 times. Excluding the Bill of Rights, 7 of the last 17 constitutional amendments have dealt directly with expanding the franchise and improving the way citizens vote.

Contrary to popular belief, there is not an affirmative right to vote in the U.S. Constitution

While the U.S. Constitution bans the restriction of voting based on race, sex and age, it does not explicitly and affirmatively state that all U.S. citizens have a right to vote. The Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore in 2000 that citizens do not have the right to vote for electors for president. States control voting policies and procedures, and as a result, we have a patchwork of inconsistent voting rules run independently by 50 states, 3,067 counties and over 13,000 voting districts, all separate and unequal.

Millions of Americans are permanently barred from voting

Approximately 5 million Americans convicted of felonies who have already completed their sentences are permanently disenfranchised. Fourteen states do not have an automatic restoration process in place for returning citizens who have completed their sentences. Some states like Florida leave re-enfranchisement decisions to the discretion of public officials, discretion which could be exercised arbitrarily or used for political gain.

However, it is not only ex-felons who face difficulty registering to vote. Americans living overseas have trouble registering in their home district, because their state may not consider them residents anymore. Many college students attempting to register at their college precinct have faced voter intimidation or were simply refused the ability to register to vote. Such obstacles are not only arbitrary, but in many cases politically motivated.

The Right to Vote Amendment will guarantee all American citizens at least 18 years of age a constitutionally protected individual right to vote. Much like the rights to speech and religion, a constitutionally protected right to vote will be difficult to limit without showing a strong need for the limitation to exist.

State authority over voting creates unnecessary voting difficulties

Voting should be a simple process in which any registered citizen can easily participate. However, this is not always the case. Voter identification and registration requirements, as well as the machines that voters use, vary widely between states. States and counties design their own ballots, pursue their own voter education, and have near-complete authority over their state voting policies and procedures. With over 10,000 different jurisdictions, voters and potential voters are much more likely to cast a counted vote in some states, some counties, and some areas of the country than others, simply based on the difference in standards for each election. Elections in many states are rife with lost and incorrectly counted votes, and many voters are incorrectly told that they cannot cast a ballot.

Since voting is regulated by the states, there is little the national government can do if voters are intimidated or harassed at the polling booth. With the Supreme Court's 2013 decision to strike down section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, and Congress's unwillingness to act to restore key components of the Act, a Right to Vote Amendment is needed to further enforce voting rights.

Congress is powerless to set national standards

At present, Congress can take no action to formally help improve voting standards across the nation. While the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which passed in response to the voting fiasco of the 2000 presidential elections, does establish some standards including a provisional ballot, states are not required to follow these policies. The only way to ensure that every vote is counted and that electors follow the will of the people of their state is to create a constitutionally protected right to vote. The Right to Vote Amendment will give Congress the authority to protect the individual right to vote and oversee voting policies and procedures to ensure that elections are fair, accurate and efficient.

The Bill: House Joint Resolution 74

U.S. House Members Mark Pocan, among a number of other co-sponsors, has shown great leadership in introducing House Joint Resolution 74 (H.J. Res. 74), a bill that would establish an explicit right to vote in the Constitution. Read FairVote's policy brief on the right to vote amendment. See the text of the bill below:

SECTION 1. Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.

SECTION 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.

Right to Vote Resources

Links

RightToVoteAmendment.com - FairVote's resource hub on the Right to Vote Amendment

PromoteOurVote.com - FairVote's project to advance suffrage and civic engagement in communities in the spirit of a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote

FairVote Policy Brief on the Right to Vote Amendment

Publications

Right to Vote, by Jamie Raskin (The American Prospect, August 2001)

Speeches

Reverend Jesse Jackson addresses the NAACP Convention in Philadelphia, PA July 14, 2004

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. presents a position paper at FairVote's "Claim Democracy" conference, November 2003.

Robert Richie, Executive Director, FairVote at the Right to Vote Forum in Boston, MA on July 26th, 2004

Kim Gandy, President, National Organization of Women at the Right to Vote Forum in Boston, MA on July 26th, 2004

Jesse Jackson Jr., Congressman (D-IL) at the Right to Vote Forum in Boston, MA on July 26th, 2004

Academic Papers

Election Reform and the Right to Vote, by Anita S. Earls, Director of Advocacy, UNC Center For Civil Rights, explains the limits of HAVA and what Congress can do to establish a right to vote.

Reports

History of the Right to Vote

Throughout the history of the United States, voting rights have been expanded repeatedly by Constitutional Amendments and legislation. When the Constitution was written, most of the Framers did not believe in universal suffrage. However, as we have progressed as a society, traditionally disenfranchised groups, including women and racial minorities, have received voting rights through Constitutional Amendments. Of the 17 Amendments ratified since the Bill of Rights in 1791, seven have expanded voter eligibility or increased democratic participation. Enshrining an affirmative Right to Vote in the Constitution would be one more step toward universal suffrage and equal voting rights for all.
The History of Voting Rights (PDF)
FairVote's "Promote Our Vote" Project

At the local level, FairVote rallies support for a constitutional right to vote through its Promote Our Vote Project, a pilot program most active in Maryland. Its unique change platform works in partnerships to advance resolutions at the organizational, campus, and local level in support of an explicit right to vote in the U.S. Constitution, and concrete changes in practices and policy to ensure fair and equitable voting rights. The program's leadership consists of two dozen voting rights experts and advocates.

Maryland Resolutions

Based in Maryland, FairVote's Promote Our Vote Project has worked with local elected officials to build support for city and county right to vote resolutions.

Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and the City of Takoma Park have each passed resolutions calling for an explicit right to vote in the constitution and other national voting rights policy changes, such as the passage of the Voting Rights Amendment Act.

These localities have a collective population of approximately two million residents.

Montgomery County and Takoma Park resolutions paved the way for right to vote task forces to make policy recommendations and produce reports for recent municipal elections.

Additional Maryland cities are considering concrete policy ideas focused on increasing civic engagement and voter turnout.

Florida Resolutions

FairVote's Promote Our Vote Project provides services to partners in Florida as they advance right to vote resolutions across the state.

The University of Florida and Palm Beach State College passed right to vote resolutions through their student governments.

These universities have a combined enrollment of over 70,000 students.

These resolutions supported a national and state right to vote. They also sought practices and policies that improve the voting process for students.

FairVote's Promote Our Vote Project worked with Florida New Majority to introduce and successfully pass a right to vote resolution in North Miami.
I have never had a problem voting. Don't we already have a right to vote?
American adults living in states typically can vote, but they do not have a federally protected right to vote enshrined in the Constitution. States protect the right to vote to different degrees based on the state's constitutional language and statutes. The federal government traditionally only steps in to prevent certain broad abuses, such as denying the right to vote based on race (15th Amendment), sex (19th Amendment), or age (26th Amendment).

In most states, counties design their own ballots, pursue their own voter education, have their own policies for handling overseas ballots, hire and train their own poll workers, select polling place locations, and maintain their own voter registration lists. States have wide leeway in determining policies on absentee voting, polling hours and funding of elections. As a result, voters and potential voters have different experiences going through the registration and voting process depending on where they live. These differences can be even more pronounced in some local elections because of varying degrees of federal and state support.

States also currently have the power to explicitly limit the franchise. Current data shows states have chosen to deny nearly six million American citizens the right to vote because of felony convictions, including millions who have completely paid their debt to society. Some states even deny certain classes of overseas voters the right to vote.

Don't citizens have a right to vote in presidential elections?

Not necessarily. Article II of the Constitution reads in part: "Each state shall appoint, such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors..." In other words, it is the state legislature and not the citizens of a particular state that determine which presidential candidate receives that state's electoral votes. In the early decades of the country, several state legislatures actually appointed electors to the Electoral College, rather than hold popular elections in their state. In the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, five justices declared, "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College." The Court went on to say that Florida's legislature has the power to take that power away from the people at any time, regardless of the popular vote tally.

In addition, it took a constitutional amendment in 1961 to enable residents of Washington, D.C. to vote for president. But the millions of American citizens living in territories like Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam still cannot vote for president.
What administrative problems do we have with voting in the United States and how will a constitutional amendment help?
Without national standards, states are free to create their own voting policies and procedures, which can limit or restrict a citizen's ability to vote. Only clear standards will ensure that every vote counts. States would be held accountable for running fair elections, and the federal government would be responsible for ensuring that funds were available to meet those high standards.

According to a study of the 2008 presidential election produced by the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2-4 million registered voters were "discouraged" from voting because of administrative hassles, such as long lines, voter identification, and problems obtaining an absentee ballot. The same study reports an estimated 9 million eligible people attempted to register but failed due to voter registration barriers like missed deadlines and changes of residence. A Constitutional Right to Vote will give Congress broad discretion in setting standards to ensure greater equality in election administration.
What groups of Americans would be protected by a right to vote amendment?
Legislation to establish a right to vote states that all American citizens who are of voting age have an individual right to vote "in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides." The federal government would protect this individual right to vote, thus making it more difficult for states or localities to disenfranchise groups or maintain procedures that make it unnecessarily difficult for citizens to vote. It would enfranchise all those who had been stripped of the right to vote due to a felony conviction and would pave the way for voters in Washington, D.C. to vote for a federal representative and Senators. In general, it would create more ways for individuals to ensure that their county and state use procedures that give citizens' the ability to vote.
Will citizens in the territories (Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and Guam) be able to vote for president?
At present, residents of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam are all citizens of the U.S. They pay taxes and can be drafted into the military, but do not vote for president. While this amendment would not specifically give citizens of the territories the right to vote automatically, it does open the doorway for them to gain the ability to vote for president.
What about American Samoa?
Residents of American Samoa are not actually American citizens; they are nationals. Current legislation to establish a right to vote specifies that only American citizens would have a right to vote, so nationals would not be included.
Will non-citizens and 16-year-olds be able to vote?
Under this amendment the decision about expanding the franchise to non-citizens and 16- and 17-year-olds would remain within states' jurisdiction.
Does the amendment get rid of the Electoral College?
The amendment does not specifically comment on the Electoral College. However, by declaring that every U.S. citizen has a constitutional right to vote, it does lay the groundwork for an argument against the Electoral College. But if the Electoral College remains, the amendment would bind state legislatures to appoint presidential electors based on the popular vote of the people.
How is this amendment different from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)?
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was a statute passed in response to the Florida election debacle and the systemic voting irregularities seen across the country after the 2000 presidential election. This act establishes some helpful standards. For example, it includes section on provisional ballots that allows a person to cast a vote if the person believes he or she is registered but does not appear on the voter register of that precinct. However, HAVA falls short because it does not set guidelines for how those provisional ballots should be counted.

Furthermore, the Act does nothing for the millions of Americans who are permanently disenfranchised in a dozen states because they are ex-felons. It does not prevent states from wrongly purging voters or engaging in other activities that limit the franchise. Fundamentally, it does not grant a right to vote. States still have the authority to direct electors to vote for a candidate of the legislature's choice. A constitutionally protected right to vote is the only means to ensure that every American will be protected.
Does the amendment guarantee statehood for Washington, DC?
The Right to Vote Amendment does not specifically call for statehood for Washington, D.C. and its half million residents. However, the amendment does guarantee that all Americans who reside in our nation's capital have a constitutionally protected individual right to vote, which could lead the way to full representation in Congress.
Is the right to vote a partisan issue?
No. The Supreme Court and many of our leaders from across the spectrum have affirmed the importance of the right to vote. Some may mistakenly believe that the amendment takes authority away from the states and moves it to the federal level, but in fact the amendment only ensures states meet certain clear standards in how they protect the right to vote. By ensuring that every American has an individual right to vote that is protected by the Constitution, this amendment establishes voting as an individual right, not just a privilege given by the states.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Voting is an American principle and a basic democratic right that should be protected, promoted, and practiced, which is why many people are surprised to learn that the U.S. Constitution provides no explicit right to vote. This leaves voting rights vulnerable to the whims of politicians, and some citizens with fewer rights than others.

# data[].attributes.headline
Lum v. Rice-- enshrines white supremacy and segregation by race

# data[].attributes.subject
Lum v. Rice-- enshrines white supremacy and segregation by race

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the exclusion on account of race of a child of Chinese ancestry from a public school did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision effectively approved the exclusion of any minority children from schools reserved for whites.

The case was brought by the Lum family of Rosedale, Mississippi, Chinese immigrants with two American-born children who had attended local public schools for white children without incident until, in the wake of an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment nationwide after passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, they were told by administrators that their children could only attend the district's school for black children. Since it was poorly funded and equipped, the Lums did not want their daughters to attend there. They filed suit in local court to force the district to allow their daughters to continue attending the white school.

Earl Brewer, a former governor of the state, represented the Lums, arguing that forcing the girls to attend the inferior school violated their Fourteenth Amendment, and that since they were not Black they should be allowed to attend the schools for whites. He was able to win the writ of mandamus they sought, but then the school district appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court, which heard the case and unanimously reversed the lower court, holding that Mississippi's constitution and laws clearly distinguished Asians ("Mongolians", it called them) from whites, so the Lums could not attend white schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted Brewer's certiorari petition to review the case. The case was never argued; instead just decided on its briefs, and the Lums' was so poor it led Justice Louis Brandeis to ask around if some other lawyer could be found on short notice to argue the case. Chief Justice William Howard Taft's short unanimous opinion ended with a pronouncement that all racial segregation in schools was constitutional; while it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education a quarter-century later, it gave greater legal foundation to educational segregation in the short term and set back efforts to end it.

In the late 19th century, following the Civil War, the United States began to deal with the place in society of two racial minorities: Blacks, especially those newly freed from slavery, and Chinese, who had begun emigrating to the West Coast in large numbers first to try their luck in the California Gold Rush and later to work on railroad construction and mining. Both came to be seen as a threat to an existing social hierarchy dominated by whites: Blacks for their newly free status, and the Chinese as cheap labor. States that had formerly allowed slavery dealt with the former through Jim Crow laws mandating racial segregation in public accommodations such as transport and public schools, Black Codes that made specific acts crimes when committed by Blacks, and vaguely worded anti- vagrancy laws that allowed many Black men to be taken into custody for purposes of convict leasing.

Legal discrimination against Chinese immigrants began in California during the 1870s. The Naturalization Act of 1870, which allowed unrestricted entry and a path to citizenship for any immigrants of African descent, denied it to anyone of Chinese descent. In 1882 Congress passed the first Chinese Exclusion Act, limiting further Chinese immigration to narrowly defined categories of people, including a bar on family members of Chinese citizens already in the U.S., the only time the law has mandated immigrants be denied admission explicitly on the grounds of racial identity or national origin.

In the 1885 case Tape v. Hurley, California's Supreme Court held that a Chinese student's exclusion from a San Francisco public school was unconstitutional; the state responded by allowing the establishment of segregated schools.

Two years earlier, in the Civil Rights Cases, the Court had held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, both passed in the years after the war, only barred racial discrimination by the government, not private parties. In 1896's Plessy v. Ferguson, which went further and upheld the constitutionality of laws that mandated segregation in private facilities open to the public such as rail transport, Justice John Marshall Harlan, the sole dissenter as he had been in the Civil Rights Cases, noted the dissonance between the legal treatment of Blacks and Chinese:

There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the State and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race.

Harlan's belief that the Chinese were culturally incapable of assimilating into American society and thus properly barred from naturalizing was personal; in United States v. Wong Kim Ark two years later, where the Court held that American-born Chinese were citizens, he joined Chief Justice Melville Fuller in dissenting in part on those grounds.

Jeu Gong Lum, a native of southern China, illegally immigrated to the U.S. from Canada in 1904 and settled in the lower Mississippi Delta, where immigration laws were less enforced as employers sought to replace Black workers who had left for the North. There he married Katherine Wong, a Chinese American woman who had been adopted as an orphan in China and raised mostly in the U.S. by a Chinese father who grew wealthy operating a general store. Lum, too, opened a general store in the small Bolivar County town of Benoit that primarily served the area's Black population, barred from many business establishments by strict racial segregation laws. Operating a store made Lum a merchant and thus exempt from the Exclusion Act. Black patrons preferred shopping at Chinese-owned stores since the Chinese were less insistent on being addressed with honorifics.

The couple had two daughters, Berda and Martha, and later a son, Hamilton. Both Gong Jeu and Katherine especially sought to make sure their children lived a better life than they had. While Berda resisted her parents' efforts to educate her, desiring to leave the Delta region when she grew up, Martha consistently earned good grades in the local school.

In 1923, the Lums bought a house in Rosedale and moved there. The girls attended Rosedale Consolidated High School of the Rosedale Consolidated School District for two semesters. The following September, that ended when the school district, in response to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which effectively ended all immigration from Asia, told the Lum girls they could no longer attend its schools for whites because they were not considered white.

There was no school in the district maintained for Chinese students, and the Lum daughters were required to attend school. That left the district's school for colored children as the only public school available. It was underfunded and poorly equipped; the Lums did not want their daughters educated there. They retained local lawyer Earl L. Brewer, a former governor who had just overwhelmingly lost an election to the U.S. Senate, to represent them in legal action against the district. The Lums and their daughters were the plaintiffs; all the members of the school district's board of trustees, and other state education officials, were named as defendants, with the head of the board of trustees, Greek Rice, as the lead. Among the state officials was the state superintendent of education, Willard Faroe Bond, whom Brewer believed to have betrayed him politically while he was governor; Brewer thus drew some satisfaction from the knowledge that Bond would be personally served with the legal papers.

A lower court granted the plaintiff's request of a writ of mandamus to force the members of the Board of Trustees to admit the Lums. Their case was not that racial discrimination as such was illegal but that his daughter, had incorrectly been classified as by the authorities.

The trustees appealed to the Supreme Court of Mississippi, which decided to hear the case , with all six justices participating. Assistant attorney general Elmer Clinton Sharp argued the case for the school district, reiterating the history of segregation in the state and saying that Asians and Native Americans were not considered white. Brewer argued in response that while the state constitution had indeed not put whites and Asians on equal footing, it had also distinguished Asians and Blacks, and therefore the Fourteenth Amendment required that the Lum children be schooled with whites.

The court reversed the lower court's decision and allowed the Board of Trustees to exclude Martha Lum from the school for white children. Justice George Ethridge, a former teacher to whom his colleagues generally deferred in matters related to education, wrote for a unanimous court that considered the case as a question of whether the Lum children were within the statutory definition of white. While some other states' courts and statutes had extended the definition of "white" to include members of other races who were not Black, Mississippi's constitution and statutes were clearer in defining white people as those not "colored". "[W]e think," he wrote, "that the constitutional convention used the word 'colored' in the broad sense rather than the restricted sense; its purpose being to provide schools for the white or Caucasian race, to which schools no other race could be admitted, carrying out the broad dominant purpose of preserving the purity and integrity of the white race and its social policy."

Ethridge found the most relevant precedent to be Moreau v. Grandich, a 1917 case where, in an opinion he had also authored, a unanimous court upheld the dismissal of several children of a white couple from the Bay St. Louis schools after it was learned that they had a Black great-grandmother. While that case had not gone beyond the instant issue in deciding that those whose racial heritage was colored above a certain threshold were themselves legally colored, Ethridge wrote, "a careful reading of the opinion ... shows that the court did not intend to restrict the term 'colored' to persons having negro blood in their veins or who were descendants of negroes or of the negro race."

The state had also, since 1892, prohibited marriages between whites and Asians, for whom it used the term "Mongolians", the latter being defined as anyone with more than one-eighth Asian ancestry. Asians and coloreds, also barred from marrying whites, were free to marry each other, Ethridge noted. He added that a pair of U.S. Supreme Court decisions had both held that Asians were not white or Caucasian in the historical sense of how that word had been understood in the United States.

Lum's right to an education was not affected by the decision, Ethridge concluded. She could attend the colored school, but did not have to, as she could also be educated privately, as long as she was educated. Lum and Brewer petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari.

After the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in 1927, Brewer was preoccupied with representing the relatives of a Black man in Bolivar County who had been murdered immediately following his acquittal on murder charges in the death of a local white farmer's son, as they sought to have the killers brought to justice. Brewer handed the Lum case to a younger associate, James Flowers, who had prior to his employment with Brewer worked primarily as corporate counsel for several railroads in Mississippi. Flowers was aware that he was ignorant in the areas of law related to the case, especially the Fourteenth Amendment.

Flowers' brief for the Supreme Court justices was inconsistent, alternating between defending segregation but attacking it inasmuch as he argued the Constitution protected Lum from being forced to attend a colored school, yet ending with a suggestion that segregated schools were inherently unequal. Justice Louis Brandeis, who believed the Fourteenth Amendment allowed too much federal interference with state authority yet was open to arguments that discrimination against members of minority groups violated their due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, to the point that he had written several majority opinions to that effect (most recently Ng Fung Ho v. White, another case involving Chinese petitioners) was deeply disturbed by the brief; he asked a friend, Felix Frankfurter (himself later appointed to the Court), if it might be possible to find more competent counsel for the Lums.

The Lums themselves, realizing that the case had implications for all Chinese Americans, had similar concerns, and had arranged for a longtime friend of theirs, not a lawyer, to travel to Washington and be present at oral argument. That would be unnecessary. Within a week of filing the brief, the Court informed Flowers by telegram that it had scheduled the case for argument within the next week.

The short time available to travel to Washington, and the possibility that the case would be forfeited to the state if no one argued for the Lums, was the least of Flowers' concerns. He had never argued a case before any court, considering himself a poor public speaker. First he sought a continuance but learned that was unlikely, so then he and Brewer asked if the case could be decided purely on the basis of the briefs. The Court allowed that, and there would be no oral argument of Lum v. Rice before it.

Late in November 1927 the Court announced its decision. In a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice and former U.S. President William Howard Taft, it affirmed the Mississippi Supreme Court's ruling and thus the position of the Board of Trustees. Taft held that the petitioner had not shown that there were no segregated schools accessible for the education of Martha Lum in Mississippi:

We must assume, then, that there are school districts for colored children in Bolivar county, but that no colored school is within the limits of the Rosedale consolidated high school district. This is not inconsistent with there being at a place outside of that district and in a different district, a colored school which the plaintiff Martha Lum may conveniently attend.

Taft further stated that given the accessibility of segregated schools, the question then was whether a person of Chinese ancestry, born in and a citizen of the United States, was denied equal protection of the law by being given the opportunity to attend a school that received "only children of the brown, yellow or black races." In reference to Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, Taft concluded that the "right and power of the state to regulate the method of providing for the education of its youth at public expense is clear." Additionally, Taft pointed to a number of federal and state court decisions, most prominently Plessy v. Ferguson, all of which had upheld segregation in the public sphere and particularly in the realm of public education. Accordingly, Taft concluded:

Most of the cases cited arose, it is true, over the establishment of separate schools as between white pupils and black pupils; but we cannot think that the question is any different, or that any different result can be reached, assuming the cases above cited to be rightly decided, where the issue is as between white pupils and the pupils of the yellow races. The decision is within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools, and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Lums had pre-emptively moved across the river to Arkansas, which did not restrict Chinese attendance at its schools as strictly, in case the decision went down against them. When it did, they settled in Elaine, where they opened another grocery and Katherine was able to find a high school that would accept her daughters. It was not as prosperous a market as the one in Rosedale, and in later years the family left the Delta region entirely.

Other Chinese in Mississippi likewise began leaving the Delta, some even returning to China; save for those who found a few school districts still willing to accept their children in their white schools. Other Chinese families established private schools; in the late 1930s the state of Mississippi formally established some schools for Chinese students. They were never well-attended, and the last one closed in 1947.

Earl Brewer continued to pursue civil rights cases in the courts. In 1936 he successfully argued Brown v. Mississippi before the Supreme Court, which held that confessions obtained through beatings and torture were inadmissible as evidence, reversing the convictions of several of his clients. Brewer died in 1942, before he could live to see schools desegregated, but that had happened by the time Jeu Gong died in 1965 and Katherine in 1988.

Newspapers around the country carried the Associated Press account of the decision. Some responded with editorials. The Los Angeles Times put its response, praising the Court and advocating for further segregation, on the front page:

The Supreme Court's opinion points the way toward making [segregation] still more effective. So far segregation depends largely upon private agreement, and private agreements sometimes break down when they are submitted to severe strain. It will be better all around when they can be given legal backing.

The Chicago Defender, a prominent Black newspaper, also ran a front-page editorial, condemning the decision as ignoring the " separate but equal" provisions supposedly governing segregation in light of the conditions found in many schools for Black children only:

It is the opinion of Chief Justice William Howard Taft that these opportunities are equal ... The little shacks you attend, in which a large coal stove in the center of the room furnishes both heat and smoke-the ramshackle, tumble-down contraption, situated far down among the cotton stalks-is equal of the beautiful stone and brick structure attended by whites. You see, the three months you are allowed to attend this institution, between the sowing, chopping and picking of cotton, are equal to the nine months white children go to school. Your teachers, barely out of the primary school themselves, possessing no special training for teachers, are the equals of white teachers all especially trained and prepared for the work they undertake.

Lum continued to be cited in briefs supporting racial segregation, and court decisions upholding it, until it was effectively overruled 27 years later by the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in public schools. An important part of the decision still stands-the power of the state to make racial distinctions in its school system, and to determine the race of its students. It has not been overturned because it was not an issue in Brown.

It is remembered today for increasing the scope of permissible segregation. Historian and educator James Loewen called Lum "the most racist Supreme Court decision in the twentieth century". Legal scholar Jamal Greene has called it an "ugly and unfortunate" decision. "The Court's ruling had established a precedent more powerful than the Lum family could have imagined", observed Adrienne Berard, in Water Tossing Boulders, a history of the case. "By fighting, they had only made the enemy stronger."

Payne, Charles (1984). "Multicultural Education and Racism in American Schools". Theory into Practice. Taylor & Francis. 23 (2): 124-131. doi:10.1080/00405848409543102. JSTOR 1476441.

White, G. Edward. "The lost episode of Gong Lum v. Rice." Green Bag 18.2 (2015): 191-205. online

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lum v. Rice , 275 U.S. 78 (1927), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the exclusion on account of race of a child of Chinese ancestry from a public school did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

# data[].attributes.body
Go to sections and find resources that connect

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about the text, history, and meaning of the U.S. Constitution from leading scholars of diverse legal and philosophical perspectives.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A federal court in Florida has ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny individuals with prior felony convictions the right to vote based on their inability to pay fees and fines. Friday's decision restores the right to vote for plaintiffs who otherwise would be eligible to vote in Florida but who simply cannot afford to pay off their outstanding fines, fees and restitution.

The 55-page opinion by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle is a victory for voting rights advocates and Civil Rights advocates who argued that Florida Republicans had essentially re-instituted a poll tax on the right to vote in the Sunshine State.

The mood among pro-democracy advocates was jubilant just after the 2018 midterm elections when Florida's electorate overwhelmingly chose to allow formerly incarcerated individuals their right to vote. Some 65 percent of Floridians voted in favor of re-extending the franchise. The passage of Amendment 4 would have allowed 1.5 million previously disenfranchised Floridians the right to vote.

In sum, the popular measure affected roughly seven percent of Florida's entire population-but disproportionately impacted the state's African-American community for the better. Under the prior, 150-year-old system of disenfranchisement, nearly 20 percent of Florida's black population was denied the right to vote.

Republicans, however, quickly set to work undermining the new law.

First, they publicly dragged their feet and simply refused to implement the Voting Restoration Amendment absent implementation guidance from the state legislature. So, the GOP-dominated body got to work and passed SB 7066, a law which essentially thwarted the will of Florida's voters by preconditioning the restoration of voting rights on the ability of formerly incarcerated individuals to pay-sometimes massive-fines, fees and restitution.

The upshot of the anti-voting rights law was not lost on advocates.

"This law will disproportionately impact black Floridians with a felony conviction, who face the intersecting barriers of accessing jobs in a state with long-standing wealth and employment disparities," NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund litigation deputy director Leah Aden said. "Because the Florida Legislature ignored these well-understood realities, SB 7066 must be stopped."

Several plaintiffs quickly filed suit against the new law-including the Florida branch of the NAACP-arguing that SB 7066 was unconstitutional for various reasons.

Judge Hinkle agreed with the plaintiffs.

From the order [emphasis in original]:

[T]he State of Florida cannot deny restoration of a felon's right to vote solely because the felon does not have the financial resources necessary to pay restitution. And because, for this purpose,there is no reason to treat restitution differently from other financial obligations included in a sentence, Florida also cannot deny restoration of a felon's right to vote solely because the felon does not have the financial resources to pay the other financial obligations. [Another] court summed it up succinctly: " Access to the franchise cannot be made to depend on an individual's financial resources. "

"Suppose a state adopted a statute automatically restoring the right to vote for felons with a net worth of $100,000 or more but not for other felons," Hinkle asked hypothetically. "Would anyone contend this was constitutional? One hopes not. An official who adopts a constitutional theory that would approve such a statute needs a new constitutional theory."

[image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Federal Judge Declares GOP 'Poll Tax' Unconstitutional, Says State Can't Restrict Right to Vote Based on Ability to Pay

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A federal court in Florida has ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny individuals with prior felony convictions the right to vote based on their inability to pay fees and fines. Friday's decision restores the right to vote for plaintiffs who otherwise would be eligible to vote in Florida but who simply cannot afford to pay off their outstanding fines, fees and restitution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Did The U.S. End Up With A Two-Party System?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How Are U.S. Voter Demographics Changing? http://www.seeker.com/us-voter-demographics-are-changing-1945112291.html Subscribe! http://bitly.com/1iLOHml Democrats and Republicans dominate the American political system, leaving third parties behind. So why is there a two party system? Learn More: Britannica: Two-Party System https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-party-system PBS: Two-Party System http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/unreasonableman/twoparty.html CNN: Washington (George) got it right http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/16/opinion/alexander-washington-george/ Music Track Courtesy of APM Music: Subscribe to Seeker Daily!

# data[].attributes.headline
Voting Rights for Native Americans and Alaska NAtives

# data[].attributes.subject
Voting Rights for Native Americans and Alaska NAtives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Voting Rights for Native Americans | The Right to Vote | Elections | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It’s often overlooked that self-government in America was practiced by Native Americans, long before the formation of the United States government. Yet Native Americans faced many of the same hurdles as African Americans and women before gaining the right to vote.

# data[].attributes.headline
Duverger's Law - Plurality Rule Elections 

# data[].attributes.subject
Duverger's Law - Plurality Rule Elections 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In political science, Duverger's law holds that plurality-rule elections (such as first past the post ) structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party system and that "the double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to favor multipartism".

# data[].attributes.body
AK court case regarding dividend distribution and the Equal Protection Clause.

# data[].attributes.body
How debates between Jefferson and Hamilton shaped the political system of the US.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In George Washington's Farewell Address (1796), the retiring president warned that the creation of political factions, "sharpened by the spirit of revenge," would most certainly lead to "formal and permanent despotism." Despite Washington's cautionary words, two of his closest advisors, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, helped to form the factions that led to the dual party system under which the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Kathryn Bruchmann,

Birgit Koopmann-Holm,

Aaron Scherer

Subject Areas

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here.

We want your feedback. Do these Subject Areas make sense for this article? Click the target next to the incorrect Subject Area and let us know. Thanks for your help!

Abstract

Decades of research have demonstrated that we like people who are more similar to us. The present research tested a potential mechanism for this similarity-liking effect in the domain of politics: the stereotype that people's political orientation reflects their morals. People believe that Democrats are more likely to endorse individualizing morals like fairness and Republicans are more likely to endorse binding morals like obedience to authority. Prior to the 2016 election, American participants (N = 314) viewed an ostensible Facebook profile that shared an article endorsing conservative ideals (pro-Trump or pro-Republican), or liberal ideals (pro-Clinton or pro-Democrat). Participants rated the favorability of the profile-owner, and completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire for the profile-owner and themselves. As predicted, participants liked the profile-owner more when they shared political beliefs, and used political stereotypes to infer the moral foundations of the profile-owner. Additionally, the perceived moral foundation endorsement of the profile owner differentially mediated the relationship between the ideology and evaluations of the profile owner based on the party affiliation of the participant: perceived individualizing foundations mediated the relationship for Democratic participants and perceived binding foundations mediated the relationship for Republican participants. In other words, people liked their in-group members more because they thought that the profile-owner endorsed a specific type of morals. In Study 2 (N = 486), we ruled out the potential explanation that any political stereotype can account for the similarity-liking effect, replicating the results of Study 1 even when controlling for perceptions of other personality differences. Taken together, these studies highlight that there may be something unique about the perceived type of morality of political in-group and out-group members that may be contributing to the similarity-liking effect in politics.

Citation: Bruchmann K, Koopmann-Holm B, Scherer A (2018) Seeing beyond political affiliations: The mediating role of perceived moral foundations on the partisan similarity-liking effect. PLoS ONE 13(8): e0202101. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202101

Editor: Mitchell Rabinowitz, Fordham University, UNITED STATES

Received: December 4, 2017; Accepted: July 28, 2018; Published: August 29, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 Bruchmann et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The data set for this study has been uploaded to a public repository and can be accessed via the following link: https://figshare.com/articles/Seeing_beyond_political_affiliations_The_mediating_role_of_perceived_moral_foundations_on_the_partisan_similarity-liking_effect/6972392.

Funding: This work was supported by Santa Clara University, Dean's Grant #14015, $1500, KB. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The 2016 presidential race was historic in part because of the intense division of the political landscape[ 1]. The election featured the most disliked presidential candidates in history [ 2], and the partisan divide was the greatest in two decades. According to the Pew Research Center [ 1], more than half of Democrats and Republicans reported not just disliking each other, but actually being afraid of each other. This partisan divide was especially present on social media platforms like Facebook, where evidence suggests that people are more likely to be "friends" with politically like-minded individuals [ 3] and be motivated to avoid political outgroup members' opinions [ 4]. Consequently, social media newsfeeds look remarkably different for Democrat or Republican Facebook users [ 5] both in the attitudes and opinions that are shared, but also in what news stories are shared. Previous research has demonstrated that people tend to like or want to engage with people similar to them [ 6, 7]; the present work investigates how the stereotypes that people hold about Democrats and Republicans-particularly about their moral beliefs-might account for this similarity-liking effect in politics.

Similarity-liking effect

Initially labeled by Byrne [ 6, 7] as the "Attraction Paradigm", there has now been decades of research supporting the idea that we like people who are similar to us [ 8, 9, 10]. This similarity-liking effect emerges regardless of whether the similarity is based on something significant, like important attitudes [ 11], or something irrelevant, like sharing birthdays [ 12]. People particularly like others who change their attitudes to become more aligned with their own [ 13]. There is evidence that these effects even happen at a neurological level; research found that the same brain region is activated when people are mentalizing about themselves or similar (but not dissimilar) others [ 14]. Other work suggests that this similarity-liking effect could also work in reverse (i.e., a liking-similarity effect) such that likeable people are considered to be more similar to the self than unlikeable people [ 15].

Similarity-liking effects are particularly strong for political attitudes [ 16, 17]. In addition to liking people more when they share political attitudes [ 16], people favor their political in-group, influencing everything from their willingness to give money to or share an office with others [ 18] to the recollection of a political candidate's face [ 19]. People are also more likely than chance to be in romantic relationships with politically similar others [ 20], suggesting politically-driven assortative mating. People can categorize the political affiliation of others even without conscious awareness, suggesting it is an important aspect of how we form impressions of others [ 21]. Another example of this is that people may even be drawn to politically similar people on an olfactory level; people prefer the body odors of people in the same political party over people from the opposing party [ 22]. People also tend to dislike others who hold different values, beliefs, or attitudes [ 6, 23, 10]; changing an initially positive impression of others when discovering political dissimilarities [ 24]. Moreover, people perceive those who disagree on political issues to be more dissimilar to them than they actually are [ 17, 25].

But what drives political homophily? Do we like people more simply because of a shared group membership? We know from research using the minimal groups methodology [ 26] that even small, irrelevant distinctions between groups can lead to preferential treatment for ingroup members, and that this bias can increase when the group divisions are more pronounced [ 27]. Because the divide between political parties is perceived to be large-in many cases bigger than it actually is [ 28, 29]-more ingroup favoritism and outgroup bias is expected. However, some argue that the distinction between ingroup and outgroup members may just be an extension of the similarity-liking effect; in other words, one path to determining group membership itself is through assessing similarity to another person [ 30].

The present research argues that political group membership may signal other aspects of people that lead to the similarity-liking effect. Namely, we posit that people might use stereotypes about a person's politics to guide subsequent judgments. While we know that stereotypes generally guide judgments and behavior [ 31], stereotypes about political groups could have arguably larger downstream consequences since there are fewer taboos against holding them, expressing them, or acting on them unlike stereotypes about racial, gender, or religious groups [ 32]. Specifically, we predict that stereotypes about the morals of different political parties will in part explain the similarity-liking effect.

Political stereotypes.

Not surprisingly, people hold political stereotypes about the attitudes specific party members will have towards issues [ 17, 25, 33, 34, 35, 36]. However, people even make assumptions about personality based on political party [ 37, 38]. Research suggests that people perceive Democrats to be warmer and Republicans to be more competent, with these stereotypes being particularly pronounced for ingroup members [ 39]. Other research has demonstrated that there are stereotypes about the physical appearance of Democrats and Republicans [ 40, 37, 41, 42]. Research utilizing a reverse correlation methodology suggests that people's mentalizations of liberals' faces are happier and less angry than conservatives' faces [ 41]. There is some evidence that this might represent actual differences in appearance. Multiple studies have demonstrated that people can identify a person's political affiliation at greater than chance level just by looking at a photograph [ 37, 40, 42]. Researchers suggest that these judgments may be based on stereotypes that Republicans express more dominance and facial maturity, whereas Democrats express more likeability and trustworthiness [ 37]. Additionally, political candidates' facial structure can predict whether or not they are elected; in the absence of party information, Republicans were shown to prefer "Republican looking" candidates, though Democrats did not demonstrate a preference based on candidates' facial differences [ 40].

People also hold political stereotypes about psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. Some research suggests that conservativism is a form of motivated social cognition given the correlations between political conservatism and traits like fear of threats or death, intolerance of ambiguity, and needs for structure and closure [ 43]. Based on these findings, Scherer and colleagues [ 38] examined whether stereotypes about these political differences exist. Their results demonstrate that people believe that conservatives are more likely than liberals to be motivated to reduce uncertainty (Need for Cognitive Closure)[ 44], to believe the world to be dangerous (Belief in a Dangerous World) [ 45], to prefer a hierarchical society over equality (Social Dominance Orientation) [ 46], and to prefer existing social structures over ideas of social change (System Justification) [ 47]. While the patterns of these stereotypes reflect actual differences between liberals and conservatives, people exaggerate these differences [ 38].

Moral foundations theory.

Critically for the present research, people hold political stereotypes that exaggerate actual differences in the types of morals that conservatives and liberals [ 34, 48]. According to Moral Foundations Theory [ 49] liberals are more likely to endorse individualizing foundations, which focus on individuals' rights through preventing harm towards others and promoting fairness, while conservatives tend to be more likely to endorse binding foundations, which are factors that bind groups together through respecting authority, loyalty to in-group members, and physical or spiritual purity. People often cite these moral features as the reason for their political beliefs; with conservatives invoking binding foundations and liberals invoking individualizing foundations when defending their politics [ 50]. Conservatives and liberals even narrate their lives differently based on moral foundations; content analysis demonstrated that conservatives are more likely to describe lessons from strict moral authorities, whereas liberals are more likely to describe lessons regarding empathy for others [ 51].

Endorsement of these different moral foundations predicts partisan differences on political issues, such as support for same-sex marriage [ 52] or stem-cell research [ 53]. Moral foundations also influence behaviors such as donations to causes [ 54, 55]; voting [ 56]; or eco-friendly behaviors like using energy-efficient lightbulbs [ 57].

Based on these findings that 'typical' liberals or conservatives are perceived as having different moral foundations, we predict that when learning a person's political orientation, people will make judgments about that person's moral beliefs. We also predict that the perceptions of a person's moral foundations should predict the overall impression that is formed of the person.

In general, moral people are considered to be more likeable [ 58]. Perceived morality predicts how favorably a person or group of people is viewed even beyond that person's general warmth or competence [ 59, 60, 61]. Perhaps because of this, when gathering information in order to form an impression, people are more interested in gathering morality information than sociability information [ 62]. Additionally, positive traits like sociability and competence only lead to favorable impressions for moral (vs. immoral) people [ 63]. Additionally, recent research found that we tend to dehumanize people who are perceived as immoral and assume that they experience less social pain [ 64]. As a result, perceiving others as more moral predicts more positive behavioral intentions towards them [ 59, 65].

On a group level, people are more likely to identify with ingroups that are moral whether or not they are competent or sociable [ 66], are more likely to adhere to morality based ingroup norms [ 67], and are more willing to work with an ingroup towards morality based goals even if competence could suffer [ 68]. Additionally, when we perceive an outgroup to be less moral, we require less evidence to confirm their immorality [ 69]. This intergroup moral perception can be particularly important for politics; during the 2016 election season, media outlets focused the majority of their coverage on the (im)morality of the two presidential candidates [ 70]. Because morality is so important to impression formation, and so tightly coupled with political orientation, we argue that overall impressions of others formed on the basis of political affiliation are likely to be based in perceptions of morality. Additionally, we hypothesize that the two major groups of moral foundations (individualizing and binding) will differentially explain the similarity-liking effect for Democrats and Republicans given their different emphases by these two groups.

Present research

The present research tested how learning someone's political orientation from a Facebook post can influence the impression that is formed of the profile-owner and the consequences of these impressions. While scrolling past posts in a newsfeed might not provide much detail, there is evidence that small snippets of information can lead to accurate judgments[ 71]. For example, after seeing an online post for only five seconds, people made spontaneous trait inferences about the target [ 72]. In the present study, we were specifically interested in the types of impressions people form when seeing the profile of a person with political posts on Facebook.

Across two studies, participants viewed a Facebook profile that shared a political article indicating that the profile-owner was a Democrat or Republican. After viewing the Facebook profile, participants rated the profile-owner's moral foundations and general favorability. We hypothesized that people would base their judgments of the profile-owner on political stereotypes; profiles sharing liberal information would be perceived as endorsing more individualizing foundations and less binding foundations than profiles sharing conservative information. Consistent with previous research on the similarity-liking effect, we predicted that profile-owners would be rated more favorably when they shared political affiliation with participants; however, we expected that these effects would be due to the perception of moral foundations. In other words, we expected that perceptions of the profile-owner's moral foundations would mediate the similarity-liking effect. Furthermore, we predicted that the participants' political beliefs would moderate this mediation such that different morals should matter for Democrats and Republicans. Specifically, we predicted that for Democrats, perceptions of individualizing foundations would be associated with greater favorability of the profile-owner while for Republicans, perceptions of binding foundations would be associated with greater favorability. In Study 2, we examined whether these mediators would hold even when controlling for other political stereotypes linked to personality traits associated with motivated social cognition.

Study 1

Method

Participants and design.

Three months before the 2016 presidential election, 524 American MTurk workers (57.8% female, 23% nonwhite; M age = 35 years, SD = 11.7 years) participated in a study described as assessing "social media impressions". The study was approved by the Santa Clara University IRB (application #16-05-810), and participants provided consent via online survey.

Materials and procedure.

Participants viewed an image of a Facebook profile that was constructed by the research team. Across all conditions, the profile featured a photo of a white man and woman, several group photos, 749 friends, and general posts about vacation photos, TV shows, etc. All posts were liked and commented on by "friends". All identifying information was hidden. In all conditions, the profile's most recent shared article was political in nature; it was either Republican (pro-Trump, or pro-Republican) or Democratic in nature (pro-Clinton, or pro-Democrat) with the caption "I couldn't agree more". A control condition with no political affiliation information was included for the purposes of a different research question; as the results are not pertinent here, this condition will not be discussed. See S1 for the associated ANOVA analyses for this condition.

After viewing the profile, participants rated the likeability and intelligence of the target (1 = extremely unlikeable/unintelligent, 7 = extremely likeable/intelligent) and indicated how likely they would become friends with the target (1 = extremely unlikely, 7 = extremely likely). As part of the cover story, participants also listed what they remembered from the Facebook profile and described other characteristics or traits that they believe the profile-owner might have.

Participants then completed a version of the 30-item Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) [ 49] which was edited so that the questions were about the profile-owner. The MFQ assesses each of the five moral foundations in two ways. First, participants indicated the relevance of each moral foundation for different concerns, specifying the extent to which they thought the profile-owner would think a factor linked to the moral foundations was relevant for deciding whether something was right or wrong (0 = not at all relevant, 5 = extremely relevant). Examples include whether or not someone "suffered emotionally" ( harm) or "violated standards of purity and decency" ( purity). Second, in the "judgments" portion, participants indicated to what extent they thought the profile-owner would agree with statements linked to moral foundations (0 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Examples include "justice is the most important requirement for a society" ( fairness) or "respect for authority is something all children need to learn" ( authority).

Participants then completed the MFQ for themselves and provided demographic information. Participants indicated whether they think of themselves as Democrats, Republicans, or Independents/Other, and who they were planning on voting for in the 2016 election.

Participants were then probed for suspicion about the study and then were asked to recall the political affiliation of the target person in the profile before being debriefed.

Results

Data for both studies can be found here: https://figshare.com/articles/Seeing_beyond_political_affiliations_The_mediating_role_of_perceived_moral_foundations_on_the_partisan_similarity-liking_effect/6972392. Participants self-identified as Democrats (63.51%), Republicans (31.75%) and Other (24.17%). Because we were interested in how political similarity could influence perceptions, we excluded the people who did not identify as Republican or Democrat from our analyses. Of the remaining participants (N = 314), 76.9% of Democrats planned on voting for Hillary Clinton and 75% of Republicans planned on voting for Donald Trump. Participants' political affiliations did not differ by condition, F<1.

Manipulation check.

To check our Facebook manipulation, we coded participants' responses to what political affiliation the profile-owner had. Liberal responses (e.g., Clinton or Democrat) were coded as -1, no answer or "unsure" was coded as 0, and conservative responses (e.g., Trump or Republican) were coded as 1. An ANOVA revealed a main effect of Facebook condition confirming that our manipulation worked, F(1, 310) = 620.22, p < .001, η p ² = .667. The Democratic profile-owners ( M = -0.78, SD = 0.44) were rated as more liberal than the Republican profile-owners ( M = 0.70, SD = 0.55).

Preliminary analyses

In order to test whether our sample showed the typical response patterns for endorsement of moral foundations, the self-MFQ was scored; composite scores were calculated for individualizing foundations (harm and fairness, α = .82) and binding foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity, α = .87). Participants' political party predicted responses to both individualizing foundations, F(1, 310) = 25.03, p < .001, η p ² = .075, and binding foundations, F(1, 310) = 50.97, p < .001, η p ² = .141). Consistent with previous research, Democrats ( M = 29.19, SD = 4.34) were more likely to endorse individualizing foundations than Republicans ( M = 26.56, SD = 4.88), and Republicans ( M = 25.34, SD = 4.91) were more likely to endorse binding foundations than Democrats ( M = 20.52, SD = 5.94). Using paired samples t-tests, we found that both Democrats, t(205) = 18.64, p < .001, and Republicans, t(107) = 2.66, p = .009 were more likely to endorse individualizing foundations than binding foundations. Participants' self-ratings of binding foundations were not different across Facebook profile conditions, F<1. Unexpectedly, self-ratings of individualizing foundations were different, F(1,310) = 9.83, p = .002, η p ² = .031; participants who saw the Republican profile-owner were more likely to endorse individualizing foundations ( M = 29.02, SD = 4.00) than participants who saw the Democrat profile-owner ( M = 27.60, SD = 5.18).

Profile-owner's moral foundations.

The MFQ was also scored for the profile-owner ratings and composite scores were calculated for individualizing foundations (α = .91) and binding foundations (α = .87). See Table 1 for all profile-owner ratings.

Ratings of the profile-owner's individualizing foundations were subjected to a 2 (Facebook profile: Democrat, Republican) x 2 (participant political party: Democrat, Republican) ANOVA. The effect of participant political party was significant, F(1, 310) = 5.85, p = .016, η p ² = .019 such that Democrats rated the profile-owners ( M = 24.42, SD = 6.46) lower in individualizing foundations than Republicans ( M = 25.96, SD = 4.75). A main effect of Facebook condition also emerged, F(1, 310) = 8.20, p = .004, η p ² = .026. Consistent with previous research (Graham et al., 2012), the Democratic profile-owners was rated as more likely to endorse individualizing foundations than the Republican profile-. This main effect was qualified by a participant political party x Facebook condition interaction, F(1, 310) = 6.65 p = .01, η p ² = .021. For Democrats, Republican profile-owners were seen as less likely to endorse individualizing foundations than Democratic profile-owners ( p < .001, d = -0.60). For Republicans, there was no difference in the ratings of the profile-owner's binding foundations across Facebook profile condition.

Ratings of the profile-owner's binding foundations were subjected to a 2 (Facebook profile: Democrat, Republican) x 2 (participant political party: Republican, Democrat) ANOVA. A main effect of Facebook condition emerged, F(1, 310) = 13.05, p < .001, η p ² = .04. As predicted, the Republican profile-owners were considered more likely to endorse binding foundations than the Democratic profile-owners. There was not a significant main effect of participant political party or a significant interaction, F s<1.

Favorability of profile-owner.

The participants' ratings of the target's likeability, intelligence, and the likelihood of becoming friends were averaged to create a favorability composite (α = .88) where higher numbers indicate greater favorability. A Facebook condition x participant political party ANOVA revealed only a significant interaction, F(1, 310) = 42.89, p < .001, η p ² = .122, As predicted by the similarity-liking effect, Democrats rated the Democratic profile-owners more favorably than the Republican profile-owners ( p < .001, d = 1.02), and Republicans rated the Republican profile-owners more favorably than the Democratic profile-owners ( p = .003, d = .70).

Do moral foundations explain political similarity-liking effects?

We hypothesized that that ratings of the profile-owner's moral foundations would mediate the similarity-liking effect. More specifically, we hypothesized that different moral foundations would mediate the effect of Facebook Profile on the favorability of the profile-owner for Republicans and Democrats (see Fig 1): we predicted that Democrats would like the Democratic profile-owner more because they would perceive him to endorse more individualizing foundations, and that Republicans would like the Republican profile-owner more when because they would perceive him to endorse more binding foundations. To test our hypothesis of moderated mediation, we used Hayes' PROCESS Macro for SPSS[ 73]. First, we ran a moderated mediation model (PROCESS model 59) to examine whether the participant political party moderated the mediational role of binding and individualizing foundations on the relationship between the Facebook profile condition and the favorability of the profile-owner. Facebook profile (1 = Democratic profile, -1 = Republican profile) was entered as the independent variable (X), the composite favorability rating of the profile-owner was entered as the outcome variable (Y), the ratings of the profile-owner's binding foundations and individualizing foundations were entered as the mediators (M ₁ and M ₂), and participant political party (1 = Democrat, -1 = Republican) was entered as moderator (W). The conditional direct effect of Facebook Profile on the Favorability Rating of the profile-owner was significant for Republican participants, B c' = -.30, SE = .11, t(306) = -2.68, p < .01, and for Democrat participants, and B c' = .52, SE = .09, t(306) = 5.94, p < .001; as described above in the ANOVA analyses, Republican participants rated the Republican profile-owner more favorably, and Democrat participants rated the Democratic profile-owners more favorably.

As predicted, the conditional indirect effect of Facebook profile condition on the favorability of the profile-owner through ratings of the profile-owner's individualizing moral foundations was significant only for Democrats (95% CI: 0.05 to 0.21), but not for Republicans (95% CI: -0.04 to 0.08). The index of moderated mediation was significant for individualizing foundations (95%CI: 0.02 to 0.22) using 5,000 bootstrap samples. In other words, Democrats liked the Democratic profile-owners more in part because they perceived him to endorse more individualizing foundations, but perceptions of the profile-owner's individualizing foundations did not explain the Republican's favorability ratings of the profile-owner.

Unexpectedly, the conditional indirect effect of Facebook Profile on the favorability of the profile-owner through ratings of the profile-owner's binding foundations was not significant for Republicans (95% CI: -0.18 to .01), or Democrats (95%CI: -0.09 to 0.00). The index of moderated mediation was not significant for binding moral foundations (95% CI: -0.06 and 0.14) with 5,000 bootstrap samples. In other words, perceptions of the profile-owner's endorsement of binding foundations did not explain the similarity-liking effect for Democrats or Republicans.

To examine the nature of the moderating effects, we ran a simple mediation model (PROCESS Model 4) for Democrats (see Fig 2) and Republicans (See Fig 3) separately. As hypothesized, the Democratic profile-owner was associated with greater perceived individualizing foundations ( B = 1.86, SE = .43, t(204) = 4.30, p < .001) and lower perceived binding foundations ( B = -1.15, SE = .34, t(204) = -3.43, p < .001) by Democratic participants. Furthermore, greater perceived individualizing foundations ( B = .06, SE = .01, t(202) = 4.86, p < .001) and the Democratic profile-owners ( B = .52, SE = .08, t(202) = 6.18, p < .001) were associated with more favorability. There was a marginally significant positive association between perceived binding foundations and favorability ( B = .03, SE = .02, t(202) = 1.77, p = .08). In sum, Democrats liked the Democratic profile-owner more than the Republican profile-owner in part because they perceived him to endorse more individualizing foundations.

For Republican participants, there was a marginally significant positive association between the Republican profile-owner (coded as -1) and binding foundations ( B = -1.01, SE = .52, t(106) = -1.93, p = .06), and no significant association with perceived individualizing foundations ( B = .10, SE = .46, t(106) = .21, p = .83) higher., As predicted, greater perceived binding foundations ( B = .05, SE = .02, t(104) = 2.04, p < .05) and the Republican profile-owner ( B = -.30, SE = .12, t(104) = -2.50, p < .05) were associated with more favorability. Interestingly, perceived individualizing foundations were also marginally significantly associated with more favorability ( B = .05, SE = .03, t(104) = 1.88, p = .06). In sum, we found suggestive evidence for our hypothesis that Republicans liked the Republican profile-owner more than the Democratic profile-owner in part because they perceived him to endorse more binding foundations.

Discussion

As expected, we found strong evidence for the similarity-liking effect. Participants liked the profile-owners more when they were political in-group members versus political out-group members. Importantly, this study provided the first evidence of a mechanism behind political homophily: moral foundations. We demonstrated that people use political stereotypes about moral foundations when learning a person's political beliefs. Consistent with previous research, participants believed that Democrats preferentially endorse individualizing foundations and that Republicans preferentially endorse binding foundations. Interestingly, these effects were stronger among Democrat than Republican participants, which may make sense given that Democrats tend to exhibit greater stereotype exaggeration compared to Republicans (e.g., Graham et al., 2012; Scherer et al., 2015). Perceptions of these morals, in turn, predicted how favorably the profile-owner was viewed overall. As predicted, for Democrat participants, individualizing foundations were a stronger predictor of a favorable impression than binding foundations, whereas the opposite was true for Republican participants. It is already widely established that morals are an important aspect of impression formation (e.g., Goodwin et al., 2014). However, our study is the first to demonstrate that different kinds of morals matter for different kinds of people: For Democrat participants, individualizing foundations partially explained the similarity-liking effect, whereas for Republican participants, we found marginally significant evidence for our prediction that binding foundations can partly explain this effect.

Study 2

Study 1 provided initial evidence of a mechanism (i.e., mediator) behind the political similarity-liking effect. Study 1 suggests that the nature of this mechanism depends on the political party of the participants (i.e., moderated mediation). The aim of Study 2 was to determine whether the moderated mediation effects of the political moral foundations stereotypes on the similarity-liking effect persist when controlling for other political stereotypes. To do so, participants rated the Facebook profile-owner on other psychological measures in which political stereotypes have been demonstrated. Previous research [ 38] has demonstrated that there are stereotypes (that are exaggerations of true political differences) that Republicans are likely to be higher than Democrats in the traits of Need for Cognitive Closure (NFCC) [ 44], Belief in a Dangerous World (BDW) [ 45], Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) [ 46], and System Justification (SJ) [ 47]. Because of the unique importance of morality in impression formation [ 61] we hypothesized that political stereotypes about moral foundations would still partially explain the similarity-liking effect even when controlling for political stereotypes about traits linked to motivated social cognition. Additionally, we improved upon Study 1 by recruiting a larger sample of Republicans. This was important to examine whether the marginally significant findings for Republicans in Study 1 were a result of being underpowered to detect the mediating role of moral foundations among Republicans.

Method

Participants and design.

We recruited 520 American MTurk workers who were pre-screened as being politically liberal (N = 260) and conservative (N = 260) to participate in this study 15 months after the 2016 election. Participants then categorized themselves as Democrat (54.31%), Republican (41.15%), or Independent/Other (6.52%); as in Study 1, participants who did not identify as either Democrat or Republican were dropped from the analysis leaving a sample of 486 (65% female, 12.85% non-white; M age = 40.88 years, SD = 12.73 years). Participants were randomly assigned to view one of two Facebook profiles: Democrat or Republican. The study was IRB approved and participants provided consent via online survey.

Materials and procedure.

The procedures were largely the same as in Study 1. The pro-Republican and pro-Democrat profiles from Study 1 were used, but with updated timestamps on all posts, and more recent (post-election) articles shared with captions updated to say "I am proud to be a Democrat (Republican)".

Participants completed the short form 20-item MFQ [ 49] from the perspective of the profile-owner. Additionally, participants rated the profile-owner on shortened versions of several other measures. First, participants completed the fifteen item short form of the NFCC scale [ 74] in which they indicated how much they thought the profile-owner would agree with statements such as "I don't like situations that are uncertain" (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Next, participants completed four items from the BDW Scale [ 45] in which they indicated how much they thought the profile-owner would agree with statements such as "Despite what one hears about 'crime in the street', there probably isn't any more now than there ever has been (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Then, in the short form 4 item- SDO scale [ 46], participants indicated how the profile-owner would feel towards statements like "If certain groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer problems" (1 = very negative, 7 = very positive). Finally, participants completed a shortened version of a measure of SJ [ 47] in which they reported how much they thought the profile-owner would agree with statements like "Society is set up so that people usually get what they deserve" (1 = strongly disagree, 9 = strongly agree).

Participants then indicated how likable and intelligent they thought the profile-owner was (1 = extremely unlikable/unintelligent, 7 = extremely likable/intelligent), and how negatively or positively they felt about the person in general (1 = extremely negative, 7 = extremely positive). They also rated how likely they would be to become friends with the person (1 = extremely unlikely, 7 = extremely likely), and how much they would want the profile-owner as a neighbor (1 = not at all, 7 = very much).

Finally, participants completed the individual difference measures for themselves before they were probed for suspicion and debriefed.

Results

Preliminary analyses.

The participants' self-rated MFQ was scored and composite scores were calculated for individualizing foundations (harm and fairness, α = .78) and binding foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity, α = .85). Participants' political party predicted responses to both individualizing foundations, F(1, 484) = 29.91, p < .001, η p ² = .058, and binding foundations, F(1, 484) = 150.99, p < .001, η p ² = .238. See Table 2 for means and standard deviations of all self-rated measures. Consistent with Study 1, Democrats were more likely to endorse individualizing foundations than Republicans and Republicans were more likely to endorse binding foundations than Democrats. Again, consistent with Study 1, both Democrats t(271) = 24.94, p < .001 and Republicans t(213) = 4.96, p < .001 were more likely to endorse individualizing foundations than binding. Participants' self-ratings were marginally different across Facebook profile conditions for both individualizing foundations ( F(1, 482) = 3.35, p = .068, η p ² = .007) and binding foundations ( F(1, 482) = 3.47, p = .063, η p ² = .007) such that participants who compared to Republican profiles rated themselves as marginally higher in both binding foundations ( M = 14.78, SD = 4.66) and individualizing foundations ( M = 19.58, SD = 3.19) than participants who compared to Democrat profiles ( M = 14.17, SD = 4.42; M = 19.07, SD = 3.24).

The motivated social cognition measures were scored and subjected to Facebook condition x participant political party ANOVAs; Consistent with predictions, Republicans rated themselves higher in NFCC (α = .92, F(1, 482) = 9.20, p = .003, η p ² = .019), BDW (α = .83, F(1, 482) = 38.04, p < .001, η p ² = .073), SDO (α = .84, F(1, 482) = 223.14, p < .001, η p ² = .316), and SJ (α = .77, F(1, 482) = 96.10, p < .001, η p ² = .166) than Democrats. No effects of Facebook condition or interactions emerged.

Ratings of profile-owner.

The profile-owner's MFQ was scored and composite scores were calculated for individualizing foundations (harm and fairness, α = .91) and binding foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity, α = .89). See Table 3 for means and standard deviations of all ratings of the profile-owner.

There was a main effect of Facebook condition on individualizing and binding foundations, with higher perceived individualizing foundations for the Democratic profile owner F(1, 482) = 32.27, p < .001, η p ² = .063, and higher perceived binding foundations for the Republican profile owner, F(1, 482) = 125.10, p < .001, η p ² = .206. While there was no significant interaction with the participant's party affiliation with the binding foundation results, there was a significant interaction for the individualizing results, F(1, 482) = 35.73, p < .001, η p ² = .069. Specifically, post hoc comparisons revealed that Republican participants did not rate the profiles differently in their endorsement of individualizing foundations ( p = .843, d = -.03), while Democratic participants rated the Democratic profile-owner as more likely to endorse individualizing foundations than the Republican profile-owner ( p < .001, d = 1.02).

As expected, the Republican profile-owner was perceived as having higher NFCC ( F(1, 482) = 34.38, p < .001, η p ² = .067) , BDW ( F(1, 482) = 55.85, p < .001, η p ² = .104), SDO ( F(1, 482) = 208.31, p < .001, η p ² = .302), and SJ ( F(1, 482) = 119.79, p < .001, η p ² = .199 ) compared to the Democratic profile-owner. Unexpectedly, there was also a main effect of participants' party affiliation on SDO, F(1, 482) = 10.60, p = .001, η p ² = .022, and SJ, F(1, 482) = 13.17, p < .001, η p ² = .027 such that Democrats ( Ms = 14.02 & 16.71, SDs = 7.61 & 5.70) rated the profile-owner higher than Republicans ( Ms = 12.32 & 14.88, SDs = 6.68 & 6.38). And, Facebook condition x participant political party interactions emerged for NFCC ( F(1, 482) = 6.47, p = .011, η p ² = .013), BDW ( F(1, 482) = 14.36, p < .001, η p ² = .029), and SDO ( F(1, 482) = 16.22, p < .001, η p ² = .033) such that Democrats perceived there to be bigger differences between profile-owners than Republicans, consistent with Study 1 and previous research (e.g., Scherer et al., 2015).

The participants' ratings of the profile-owner's likeability, intelligence, their overall feelings of positive/negativity towards the profile-owner, the likelihood of becoming friends, and their desire to have the profile-owner as a neighbor were averaged to create a favorability composite (α = .94) where higher numbers indicate greater favorability. An ANOVA revealed a main effect of Facebook condition, F(1, 482) = 4.88, p = .028, η p ² = .010 such that the Democratic profile-owners was rated more favorably than the Republican profile-owner. Additionally, a main effect of Participant political party emerged, F(1, 482) = 10.81, p < .001 η p ² = .022 such that Democrats ( M = 4.71, SD = 1.43) rated the profile less favorably than Republicans ( M = 5.01, SD = 1.22). These main effects were qualified by a Facebook condition x participant political party interaction, F(1, 482) = 137.99, p < .001, η p ² = .223. As expected, Democrat participants rated the Democrat profile more favorably than the Republican profile ( p < .001, d = 1.14), and Republican participants rated the Republican profile more favorably than the Democrat profile ( p < .001, d = .93). In other words, we replicated the typical similarity-liking effect; people preferred the Facebook profile-owner when he was a member of the same political party.

Moderated mediation.

As in Study 1, we predicted that perceptions of the profile-owner's moral foundations would mediate the similarity-liking effect, and that the participants' political party would determine which moral foundation would function as a mediator; however, in Study 2, we were predicting that the effects of political stereotypes about moral foundations would still be significant, even after controlling for a different political stereotypes-stereotypes about traits linked to motivated social cognition. Our moderated mediation analysis was identical to that used in Study 1, with the exception of including the perceived motivated social cognition traits of the profile-owner as additional mediators.

The conditional direct effect of Facebook Profile on the favorability of the profile-owner was significant for Republicans, B c' = -.27, SE = .08, t(470) = -3.41, p < .001, and marginally significant for Democrats, B c' = .13, SE = .08, t(470) = 1.69, p = .09. Consistent with the results of Study 1, the conditional indirect effect of Facebook Profile on the profile-owner's favorability through ratings of individualizing foundations was significant only for Democrats (95% CI: 0.11 to 0.33), but not for Republicans (95% CI: -0.01 to 0.02). The index of moderated mediation was significant for individualizing foundations (95% CI: 0.11 to 0.33) with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Also consistent with our predictions and our marginally significant findings in Study 1, the conditional indirect effect of Facebook Profile on favorability through ratings of the profile-owner's binding foundations was significant for Republicans (95% CI: -0.45 to -0.16). It was also significant for Democrats (95% CI: -0.14 to -0.005), but as the significant index of moderated mediation for binding foundations (95% CI: 0.07 to 0.40) suggests, the indirect effect through binding foundations was much stronger for Republicans than Democrats.

All other conditional indirect effects were non-significant barring two exceptions: the conditional indirect effect of Facebook Profile on favorability through ratings of the profile-owner's SDO was significant for Democratic participants (95% CI: 0.21 to 0.55) and the conditional indirect through NFCC was significant for Republican participants (95% CI: 0.004 to 0.09). Besides the significant moderated mediation indexes for individualizing and binding foundations, the only other significant index of moderated mediation emerged for SDO (95% CI: 0.08 to 0.48). The fact that the moderated mediation indexes for the moral foundations were still significant even after controlling for motivated social cognition variables suggests that political stereotypes about moral foundations can explain the similarity-liking effect above and beyond other political stereotypes.

To examine the nature of the moderating effects, as in Study 1, we ran PROCESS Model 4 for Democrats (See Fig 4) and Republicans (See Fig 5) separately. As hypothesized and consistent with Study 1, the Democratic profile-owner was associated with greater perceived endorsement of individualizing foundations for Democratic participants ( B = 2.02, SE = .24, t(270) = 8.49, p < .001), and lower perceived endorsement of binding foundations ( B = -1.69, SE = .22, t(270) = -7.67, p < .001), NFCC ( B = -.35, SE = .05, t(270) = -6.47, p < .001), BDW ( B = -2.08, SE = .24, t(270) = -8.50, p < .001), SDO ( B = -4.98, SE = .35, t(270) = -14.25, p < .001), and SJ ( B = -2.46, SE = .31, t(270) = -7.86, p < .001). Furthermore, greater perceived endorsement of individualizing foundations ( B = .10, SE = .02, t(264) = 5.07, p < .001) and lesser perceived SDO ( B = -.07, SE = .02, t(264) = -4.61, p < .001) were associated with more favorability of the profile-owner. Interestingly, greater perceived endorsement of binding foundations was marginally significantly associated with more favorability of the profile-owner ( B = .04, SE = .02, t(264) = 1.96, p = .05) as was the Democrat profile ( B = .13, SE = .08, t(264) = 1.73, p = .08), whereas all other predictors were not. In other words, together with the indirect effects reported above, Democrats liked the Democratic profile-owners more partly because they perceived him to endorse more individualizing foundations, even after controlling for the other motivated social cognition variables.

The Republican profile-owner (coded as -1) was not associated with ratings of individualizing foundations ( B = -.05, SE = .25, t(212) = -.21, p = .84), but, as expected, was associated with greater perceived binding foundations for Republican participants ( B = -2.12, SE = .26, t(212) = -8.08, p < .001), NFCC ( B = -.14, SE = .06, t(212) = -2.16, p < .05), BDW ( B = -.68, SE = .28, t(212) = -2.46, p < .05), SDO ( B = -2.80, SE = .42, t(212) = -6.75, p < .001), and SJ ( B = -2.94, SE = .39, t(212) = -7.56, p < .001). Furthermore, the Republican profile ( B = -.27, SE = .08, t(206) = -3.30, p < .01), along with greater perceived binding foundations ( B = .14, SE = .02, t(206) = 5.75, p < .001), lesser NFCC ( B = -.23, SE = .08, t(206) = -2.69, p < .01), and lesser SDO ( B = -.03, SE = .02, t(206) = -2.00, p < .05) were associated with more favorability, whereas all other predictors were not. In other words, together with the indirect effects reported above, Republican participants liked the Republican profile-owner more in part because they perceived him to endorse binding foundations more, even after controlling for the other motivated social cognition variables. A previous version of this study was run a year earlier with a smaller sample size (N = 164), and results indicated that moderated mediation only occurred for ratings of individualizing foundations and SDO, in that they mediated the effect of Facebook profile on the profile-owner's favorability only for Democrats, not Republicans. We did not find that binding foundations mediated the effect of Facebook profile on the profile-owner's favorability for Republicans. We re-ran this study with a suitable sample size (we refrained from combining the studies because of the different timepoints the data were collected); the pattern of results from the study with the smaller sample size is largely the same as from Study 2. See S2 for the moderated mediation analyses for this study.

Discussion

In Study 2 we again found strong evidence of the similarity-liking effect. Importantly for our hypotheses, we found additional evidence that perceptions of the profile-owner's moral foundations mediate the similarity-liking effect; specifically, we again see that different kinds of morals matter for Democrats and Republicans when forming impressions. Consistent with Study 1, for Democrats (not Republicans) perceptions of the profile-owner's individualizing foundations partially mediated the effect of Facebook Profile on the favorability rating of the profile-owner. That is, the similarity-liking effect for Democrats is explained by perceptions of endorsement of individualizing foundations. In Study 2, we also demonstrated that for Republicans, perceptions of the profile-owner's binding foundations partially mediated the effect of Facebook Profile on the favorability rating of the profile-owner. That is, the similarity-liking effect for Republicans is partially explained by perceptions that the Republican profile-owner was more likely to endorse binding foundations than the Democrat profile owner. And, importantly, we found evidence that moral foundations matter even when controlling for other political stereotypes.

General discussion

The current experiments provide an important insight into political homophily. Consistent with prior work, we found that people have more positive evaluations of others who share political attitudes with them than those that hold opposing views. Additionally, we replicated previous research demonstrating that people hold political stereotypes about moral foundations and traits linked to motivated social cognition [ 34, 38]. Previously it has been assumed that the similarity-liking effect in politics was just about political affiliation (i.e., sharing beliefs, or being in an ingroup), but the present work suggests it is not political ideology per se that shapes how positively we evaluate another person, but that we view political ideology as a signal for the type of morals the other person endorses. Specifically, we provided evidence that people at least partially evaluate someone else based on the extent to which the other person shares the dominant moral foundations of their own political party, with Democrats privileging individualizing foundations and Republicans binding foundations. Even more striking is that these effects persist when controlling for other political stereotypes. Our results move beyond previous work showing the importance of morality on impression formation [ 61] by highlighting that the type of morality matters for different political groups.

Interestingly, our results suggest that not only are there political differences in which moral foundations people endorse, but that there are political differences in which moral foundations explain our (moral and non-moral) evaluations of others. This finding may provide insight into one reason that we see political "segregation" on social media [ 3] or ideological migration, where people move to geographic areas that are consistent with their political ideology [ 75, 76, 77, 78, 79]. Specifically, people may desire to move to areas that have greater ideological fit because they may view those communities as being more moral.

One curious thing about our samples was that the Republican participants were more likely to endorse individualizing foundations than binding foundations. While some research [ 48] suggests that Republicans are likely to be high in all five moral foundations, there is no research suggesting that Republicans typically endorse individualizing foundations more than binding. This pattern of responding is more often associated with Democrats. It is possible that in the "post-Trump" era, the moral foundations of Republicans have shifted; for example, it is possible that purity is less important to people who endorse President Trump (who has admitted to sexually assaulting women) than it has been for prior generations of Republicans, but the recent develop of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire prevents examinations of whether the preferred moral foundations of a political party can shift over time.

The current studies provide a foundation for other potential factors to explore to further explain the political similarity-liking effect. While we manipulated the political leanings of the articles, additional features of the article (e.g., how inflammatory the article is; how reliable the article appears to be) that might influence political homophily could also be manipulated. We also chose to utilize the same profile picture across all conditions. Future research could examine how other factors-such as the gender and race of the participant and profile-owner-interact with political ideology. Limitations of our studies include the use of non-representative samples and the use of a single article per condition which introduces the possibility of stimulus sampling issues [ 80]. Despite these limitations, we believe that the results provide initial evidence for the impact of political stereotypes on homophily, as well as downstream consequences such as willingness to associate with the person, which may help us understand the increasing polarization that is occurring in the U.S. today.

Conclusions

Our results highlight that people perceive political ideology as a cue to how "moral" a person is, and more importantly, "what kind of" moral a person is, which then influences their evaluations and willingness to associate with that person. Importantly, these studies demonstrate morality is not a singular thing when evaluating others, but that different moral foundations matter for different types of people. Specifically, Democrats are more likely to positively evaluate someone who they believe endorses the individualizing foundations of fairness and preventing harm, and Republicans are more likely to positively evaluate someone who they believe endorses the binding foundations of purity, loyalty, and respect. This process helps explain why people like their political in-group more than their political out-group and provides insights into one contributor of what divides the U.S. politically.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Makeda Adisu for creating the stimuli for these two studies and for assistance with data collection.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Seeing beyond political affiliations: The mediating role of perceived moral foundations on the partisan similarity-liking effect

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Decades of research have demonstrated that we like people who are more similar to us. The present research tested a potential mechanism for this similarity-liking effect in the domain of politics: the stereotype that people's political orientation reflects their morals.

# data[].attributes.headline
State's Rights in The Consitution and American Federalism

# data[].attributes.subject
State's Rights in The Consitution and American Federalism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Question of State's Rights and The U. S. Consitution: American Federalism Considered

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Notes, cases, questions, and materials concerning the rights of states under the United States Constitution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Political parties in the United States - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The United States Constitution is silent on the subject of political parties. The Founding Fathers did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan. In Federalist Papers No. 9 and No. 10, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, respectively, wrote specifically about the dangers of domestic political factions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Political Parties have been apart of U.S. history for over 200 years. Here we will explore and investigate the inter-workings of all political parties...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
10.2 Political Parties Today

Learning Objectives

After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What are the characteristics of modern-day American political parties?

2. What are political party platforms?

Political parties play an important role in politics today. Whereas observers like the Washington Post's David Broder could write a book in 1972 with the title The Party's Over, such eulogies were premature. Compared to the 1970s, party organizations today are larger, farther reaching, and better financed. Relations among party officials in Washington and the states have improved dramatically. Voters are still more likely to cast their votes along partisan lines than independently.

American political parties have a number of distinctive characteristics. The two major political parties have been dominant for a long period of time. The parties are permeable, meaning that people are able to join or leave the party ranks freely. The two major parties are ideologically ambiguous in that they are umbrella organizations that can accommodate people representing a broad spectrum of interests.

Two-Party Domination

A two-party system A party system like that in the United States, where nearly all elected offices are held by candidates associated with the two parties that are able to garner the vast majority of votes. is one in which nearly all elected offices are held by candidates associated with the two parties that are able to garner the vast majority of votes. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party are the major parties that have monopolized American politics since the early 1850s. A major party runs candidates for local, state, and federal offices in a majority of states and holds one of the two largest blocs of seats in the US Congress.

Many people consider the two-party system as a uniquely American phenomenon. Some scholars argue that this acceptance of the two-party norm is a result of Americans' aversion to radical politics and their desire to maintain a stable democratic political system. Having too many parties can destabilize the system by confusing voters and allowing parties who take extreme ideological positions to become prominent in government, much like Madison feared at the founding.

Ideological Ambiguity

Rather than assuming strong, polarizing ideological alignments, the two major parties represent the core values of American culture that favor centrist positions inherent in the liberal tradition of liberty, democracy, and equal opportunity. These values appeal to the majority of Americans, and political parties can advocate them without losing followers.

Former Democratic Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill was fond of saying, "In any other country, the Democratic Party would be five parties." O'Neill was referring to the fact that the Democratic Party has no clear ideological identity and instead accommodates interests from across the liberal-conservative spectrum. Groups who both favor and oppose gun control can find a home in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is loosely associated with a liberal attitude toward politics, which proposes that government should take a more active role in regulating the economy, provide a social safety net, and ensure equality in society through programs like affirmative action.

Similar things have been said about the Republican Party, although the Republicans have a more unified message than the Democrats. The Republican agenda favors capitalism and limited government intervention in people's lives. The Republican Party's base includes fewer disparate groups than the Democratic base. The Republican Party is associated with a conservative outlook that advocates limited government intervention in society and a free-market economic system.

Party Platforms

Rather than developing distinct ideological positions, parties develop policy platforms Plans outlining political party positions on issues and the actions that leaders will take to implement them if elected to office. . Policy platforms are plans outlining party positions on issues and the actions leaders will take to implement them if elected. Parties frequently assume middle-of-the-road positions or waffle on issues to avoid alienating potential supporters. For example, party platforms may oppose abortion-except in cases of rape or incest.

Some scholars contend that American parties have become more ideologically distinct over the last three decades. Party leaders are expressing polarized opinions on issues, especially at the national level. These differences can be seen in the highly partisan debate over the health-care system. Democrats in Congress support government involvement in the health-care system and worked to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act endorsed by President Obama in 2010. Republicans sought to repeal the act in 2011, arguing that it would cost people their jobs.

Permeability

Political parties in the United States are porous, decentralized institutions that can be joined readily by people who choose to adopt the party label, usually Democrat or Republican. American parties are not mass membership organizations Political parties that require people to pay dues to belong, which is not the case for American parties. that require people to pay dues if they want to belong, which is the case in many European democracies. Instead, party membership is very loosely defined often by state laws that are highly variable. In some states, citizens declare a party affiliation when registering to vote. People also can join a state or local party organization, or work for a candidate associated with a particular party.

Parties are umbrella organizations Party organizations that accommodate a wide range of groups and interests. that accommodate labor and business federations, interest groups, racial and ethnic constituencies, and religious organizations. Traditionally, the Democratic Party has been home to labor unions, and the Republican Party has accommodated business interests, although these relationships are not set in stone.

The fact that groups seeking to achieve similar political goals are found in both parties is evidence of their permeability. Pro-choice and antiabortion forces exist within the two major parties, although the Democratic Party is far more accommodating to the pro-choice position while the Republican Party is overwhelmingly pro-life. The WISH List is a group supporting pro-choice Republican candidates. The Democratic counterpart supporting pro-choice women candidates is Emily's List. Democrats for Life of America and Republican National Coalition for Life represent antiabortion constituencies.

Parties compete for the allegiances of the same groups in an effort to increase their bases of support. As the Latino population has swelled to over 35 million people, the Democratic and Republican parties have stepped up their efforts to attract Latino voters and organizations. Both parties have produced Spanish-language television ads and websites, tailored their messages about health care and education to appeal to this group, and recruited Latino candidates. The parties also have increased their appeals to Asian American voters.

Key Takeaways

Political parties today are experiencing a period of renewal. They have strengthened their organizations, improved their fundraising techniques, and enhanced the services they offer to candidates and officeholders.

American parties have three major characteristics. Two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, have dominated for over 150 years. These major parties are ideologically ambiguous in that they take middle-of-the-road rather than extreme positions on issues. Parties are permeable institutions that allow people and groups to move easily in and out of their ranks. Rather than having strong ideological predispositions, American parties devise broad platforms to outline their stances on issues.

Exercises

1. How does the two-party system differ from other party systems? What are the advantages of a two-party system? What are its disadvantages?

2. What do you think explains the enduring appeal of the two major parties? How are they able to adapt to the changing ideas of the electorate?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions: What are the characteristics of modern-day American political parties? What are political party platforms? Political parties play an important role in politics today. Whereas observers like the Washington Post's David Broder could write a book in 1972 with the title The Party's Over, such eulogies were premature.

# data[].attributes.body
(lotsa court cases at the end)

# data[].attributes.body
Wiki of all ratified amendments with their summary instead of exact quotes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Thirty-three amendments to the United States Constitution have been proposed by the United States Congress and sent to the states for ratification since the Constitution was put into operation on March 4, 1789. Twenty-seven of these, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, are part of the Constitution. The first 10 amendments were adopted and ratified simultaneously and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments. Six amendments adopted by Congress and sent to the states have not been ratified by the required number of states. Four of these amendments are still pending, 1 is closed and has failed by its own terms, and 1 is closed and has failed by the terms of the resolution proposing it. All 33 amendments are listed and detailed in the tables below.

Article Five of the United States Constitution details the two-step process for amending the nation's frame of government. Amendments must be properly proposed and ratified before becoming operative. This process was designed to strike a balance between the excesses of constant change and inflexibility.

An amendment may be proposed and sent to the states for ratification by either:

To become part of the Constitution, an amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 since 1959) by either (as determined by Congress):

The legislatures of three-fourths of the states; or

State ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states. The only amendment to be ratified through the state convention method thus far is the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933. That amendment is also the only one that explicitly repeals an earlier one, the Eighteenth Amendment (ratified in 1919), establishing the prohibition of alcohol.

When a constitutional amendment is sent to the states for ratification, the Archivist of the United States is charged with responsibility for administering the ratification process under the provisions of 1 U.S.C. § 106b. Then, upon being properly ratified, the archivist issues a certificate proclaiming that an amendment has become an operative part of the Constitution.

Beginning in the early 20th century, Congress has usually, but not always, stipulated that an amendment must be ratified by the required number of states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states in order to become part of the Constitution. Congress's authority to set a ratification deadline was affirmed in 1939 by the United States Supreme Court in Coleman v. Miller ( 307 U.S. 433).

Approximately 11,770 proposals to amend the Constitution have been introduced in Congress since 1789 (as of January 3, 2019). Collectively, members of the House and Senate typically propose around 200 amendments during each two-year term of Congress. Proposals have covered numerous topics, but none made in recent decades have become part of the Constitution. Historically, most died in the congressional committees to which they were assigned. Since 1999, only about 20 proposed amendments have received a vote by either the full House or Senate. The last time a proposal gained the necessary two-thirds support in both the House and the Senate for submission to the states was the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment in 1978. Only 16 states had ratified it when the seven-year time limit expired.

For the full text of amendments to the United States Constitution, see Additional amendments to the United States Constitution on Wikisource

Congressional Apportionment Amendment

Would strictly regulate the size of congressional districts for representation in the House of Representatives.

Pending since September 25, 1789

Titles of Nobility Amendment

Would strip citizenship from any United States citizen who accepts a title of nobility from a foreign country.

Pending since May 1, 1810

Corwin Amendment

Would make the states' "domestic institutions" ( slavery) impervious to the constitutional amendment procedures established in Article V and immune to abolition or interference from Congress.

Pending since March 2, 1861

Child Labor Amendment

Would empower the federal government to limit, regulate, and prohibit child labor.

Pending since June 2, 1924

Equal Rights Amendment

Would have prohibited deprivation of equality of rights by the federal or state governments on account of sex.

Proposed March 22, 1972; initial ratification period ended March 22, 1979, and extension period ended June 30, 1982; amendment failed, but status has been questioned

District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment

Would have treated the District of Columbia as if it were a state regarding representation in the United States Congress (including repealing the 23rd Amendment), representation in the Electoral College and participation in the process by which the Constitution is amended.

Proposed August 22, 1978; ratification period ended August 22, 1985; amendment failed

Between 1972 and 1977, 35 states ratified the ERA. Three additional states ratified it between 2017 and 2020, purportedly bringing the number of ratifications to 38, or three-fourths of the states. In January 2020, after the ^ Justice Department issued an opinion that the deadline for the passage of the amendment expired at the time of the original 1979 deadline, the attorneys general of those three states filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. challenging that opinion. They are asking the court to force the archivist of the United States to "carry out his statutory duty of recognizing the complete and final adoption" of the ERA as the Twenty-eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1. ^ "Constitutional Amendment Process". Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. August 15, 2016.

2. ^ "Constitution Day: Proposed Amendments". clayton.edu. Morrow, Georgia: Clayton State University. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015.

3. ^ Huckabee, David C. (September 30, 1997). "Ratification of Amendments to the U.S. Constitution" (PDF). Congressional Research Service reports (97-922 GOV). Washington D.C.: Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress - via University of North Texas Digital Library.

4. ^ "Measures Proposed to Amend the Constitution". Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary, United States Senate.

5. ^ Garcia, Michael J.; Lewis, Catlain Devereaux; Nolan, Andrew; Toten, Meghan; Tyson, Ashley, eds. (2017). "Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation" (PDF). 112th Congress, 2nd Session. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. pp. 25-45. Senate Document No. 112-9.

6. ^ Stracqualursi, Veronica (January 30, 2020). "Three Democratic attorneys general sue to have Equal Rights Amendment added to Constitution". CNN.

7. ^ Marr, Chris (October 13, 2020). "Equal Rights Amendment Denied Supreme Court Hearing for Now (1)". Bloomberg Law.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
List of amendments to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Thirty-three amendments to the United States Constitution have been proposed by the United States Congress and sent to the states for ratification since the Constitution was put into operation on March 4, 1789. Twenty-seven of these, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, are part of the Constitution.