Opinion ID: 108221
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Voting Age

Text: The only constitutional basis advanced in support of the lowering of the voting age is the power to enforce the Equal Protection Clause, a power found in § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. For the reasons already given, it cannot be said that the statutory provision is valid as declaratory of the meaning of that clause. Its validity therefore must rest on congressional power to lower the voting age as a means of preventing invidious discrimination that is within the purview of that clause. The history of the Fourteenth Amendment may well foreclose the possibility that § 5 empowers Congress to enfranchise a class of citizens so that they may protect themselves against discrimination forbidden by the first section, but it is unnecessary for me to explore that question. For I think it fair to say that the suggestion that members of the age group between 18 and 21 are threatened with unconstitutional discrimination, or that any hypothetical discrimination is likely to be affected by lowering the voting age, is little short of fanciful. I see no justification for stretching to find any such possibility when all the evidence indicates that Congressled on by recent decisions of this Courtthought simply that 18-year-olds were fairly entitled to the vote and that Congress could give it to them by legislation. [90] I therefore conclude, for these and other reasons given in this opinion, that in § 302 of the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970 Congress exceeded its delegated powers.