Opinion ID: 106850
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Other Factors.

Text: In this summary of what the majority ignores, note should be taken of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments. The former prohibited the States from denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The latter, certified as part of the Constitution in 1920, added sex to the prohibited classifications. In Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, this Court considered the claim that the right of women to vote was protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court's discussion there of the significance of the Fifteenth Amendment is fully applicable here with respect to the Nineteenth Amendment as well. And still again, after the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, it was deemed necessary to adopt a fifteenth, as follows: `The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' The fourteenth amendment had already provided that no State should make or enforce any law which should abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. If suffrage was one of these privileges or immunities, why amend the Constitution to prevent its being denied on account of race, &c.? Nothing is more evident than that the greater must include the less, and if all were already protected why go through with the form of amending the Constitution to protect a part? Id., at 175. In the present case, we can go still further. If constitutional amendment was the only means by which all men and, later, women, could be guaranteed the right to vote at all, even for federal officers, how can it be that the far less obvious right to a particular kind of apportionment of state legislaturesโa right to which is opposed a far more plausible conflicting interest of the State than the interest which opposes the general right to voteโcan be conferred by judicial construction of the Fourteenth Amendment? [70] Yet, unless one takes the highly implausible view that the Fourteenth Amendment controls methods of apportionment but leaves the right to vote itself unprotected, the conclusion is inescapable that the Court has, for purposes of these cases, relegated the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the same limbo of constitutional anachronisms to which the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment has been assigned. Mention should be made finally of the decisions of this Court which are disregarded or, more accurately, silently overruled today. Minor v. Happersett, supra , in which the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not confer the right to vote on anyone, has already been noted. Other cases are more directly in point. In Colegrove v. Barrett, 330 U. S. 804, this Court dismissed for want of a substantial federal question an appeal from the dismissal of a complaint alleging that the Illinois legislative apportionment resulted in gross inequality in voting power and gross and arbitrary and atrocious discrimination in voting which denied the plaintiffs equal protection of the laws. [71] In Remmey v. Smith, 102 F. Supp. 708 (D. C. E. D. Pa.), a three-judge District Court dismissed a complaint alleging that the apportionment of the Pennsylvania Legislature deprived the plaintiffs of constitutional rights guaranteed to them by the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 709. The District Court stated that it was aware that the plaintiffs' allegations were notoriously true and that the practical disenfranchisement of qualified electors in certain of the election districts in Philadelphia County is a matter of common knowledge. Id., at 710. This Court dismissed the appeal  for the want of a substantial federal question. 342 U. S. 916. In Kidd v. McCanless, 200 Tenn. 273, 292 S. W. 2d 40, the supreme Court of Tennessee dismissed an action for a declaratory judgment that the Tennessee Apportionment Act of 1901 was unconstitutional. The complaint alleged that a minority of approximately 37% of the voting population of the State now elects and controls 20 of the 33 members of the Senate; that a minority of 40% of the voting population of the State now controls 63 of the 99 members of the House of Representatives. Id., at 276, 292 S. W. 2d, at 42. Without dissent, this Court granted the motion to dismiss the appeal. 352 U. S. 920. In Radford v. Gary, 145 F. Supp. 541 (D. C. W. D. Okla.), a three-judge District Court was convened to consider the complaint of the plaintiff to the effect that the existing apportionment statutes of the State of Oklahoma violate the plain mandate of the Oklahoma Constitution and operate to deprive him of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Id., at 542. The plaintiff alleged that he was a resident and voter in the most populous county of the State, which had about 15% of the total population of the State but only about 2% of the seats in the State Senate and less than 4% of the seats in the House. The complaint recited the unwillingness or inability of the branches of the state government to provide relief and alleged that there was no state remedy available. The District Court granted a motion to dismiss. This Court affirmed without dissent. 352 U. S. 991. Each of these recent cases is distinguished on some ground or other in Baker v. Carr. See 369 U. S., at 235-236. Their summary dispositions prevent consideration whether these after-the-fact distinctions are real or imaginary. The fact remains, however, that between 1947 and 1957, four cases raising issues precisely the same as those decided today were presented to the Court. Three were dismissed because the issues presented were thought insubstantial and in the fourth the lower court's dismissal was affirmed. [72] I have tried to make the catalogue complete, yet to keep it within the manageable limits of a judicial opinion. In my judgment, today's decisions are refuted by the language of the Amendment which they construe and by the inference fairly to be drawn from subsequently enacted Amendments. They are unequivocally refuted by history and by consistent theory and practice from the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment until today.