Opinion ID: 108221
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Literacy

Text: The remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act Amendments involved in these cases is the five-year suspension of Arizona's requirement that registrants be able to read the Constitution in English and to write their names. Although the issue is not free from difficulty, I am of the opinion that this provision can be sustained as a valid means of enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment. Despite the lack of evidence of specific instances of discriminatory application or effect, Congress could have determined that racial prejudice is prevalent throughout the Nation, and that literacy tests unduly lend themselves to discriminatory application, either conscious or unconscious. [94] This danger of violation of § 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment was sufficient to authorize the exercise of congressional power under § 2. Whether to engage in a more particularized inquiry into the extent and effects of discrimination, either as a condition precedent or as a condition subsequent to suspension of literacy tests, was a choice for Congress to make. [95] The fact that the suspension is only for five years will require Congress to re-evaluate at the close of that period. While a less sweeping approach in this delicate area might well have been appropriate, the choice which Congress made was within the range of the reasonable. [96] I therefore agree that § 201 of the Act is a valid exercise of congressional power to the extent it is involved in this case. I express no view about its validity as applied to suspend tests such as educational qualifications, which do not lend themselves so readily to discriminatory application or effect. For the reasons expressed in this opinion, I would grant the relief requested in Nos. 43, Orig., and 44, Orig. I would dismiss the complaint in No. 47, Orig., for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted. In No. 46, Orig., I would grant declaratory relief with respect to the validity of § 201 of the Voting Rights Act Amendments as applied to Arizona's current literacy test; I would deny relief in all other respects, with leave to reapply to the United States District Court for the District of Arizona for injunctive relief in the event it proves necessary, which I am confident it will not. V In conclusion I add the following. The consideration that has troubled me most in deciding that the 18-year-old and residency provisions of this legislation should be held unconstitutional is whether I ought to regard the doctrine of stare decisis as preventing me from arriving at that result. For as I indicated at the outset of this opinion, were I to continue to consider myself constricted by recent past decisions holding that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment reaches state electoral processes, I would, particularly perforce of the decisions cited in n. 84, supra, be led to cast my vote with those of my Brethren who are of the opinion that the lowering of the voting age and the abolition of state residency requirements in presidential elections are within the ordinary legislative power of Congress. After much reflection I have reached the conclusion that I ought not to allow stare decisis to stand in the way of casting my vote in accordance with what I am deeply convinced the Constitution demands. In the annals of this Court few developments in the march of events have so imperatively called upon us to take a fresh hard look at past decisions, which could well be mustered in support of such developments, as do the legislative lowering of the voting age and, albeit to a lesser extent, the elimination of state residential requirements in presidential elections. Concluding, as I have, that such decisions cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny, I think it my duty to depart from them, rather than to lend my support to perpetuating their constitutional error in the name of stare decisis. In taking this position, I feel fortified by the evident malaise among the members of the Court with those decisions. Despite them, a majority of the Court holds that this congressional attempt to lower the voting age by simple legislation is unconstitutional, insofar as it relates to state elections. Despite them, four members of the Court take the same view of this legislation with respect to federal elections as well; and the fifth member of the Court who considers the legislation constitutionally infirm as regards state elections relies not at all on any of those decisions in reaching the opposite conclusion in federal elections. And of the eight members of the Court who vote to uphold the residential provision of the statute, only four appear to rely upon any of those decisions in reaching that result. In these circumstances I am satisfied that I am free to decide these cases unshackled by a line of decisions which I have felt from the start entailed a basic departure from sound constitutional principle.