Court Opinion

ID: 9626711
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:22:09.226862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:11:24.716402
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge (dissenting).
In the eyes of the Constitution, a man is a man. He is not a white man. He is not an Indian. He is not a Negro.
If private persons identify a candidate for public office as a Negro, they have a right to do so. But it is no part of the business of the State to put a racial stamp on the ballot. It is too close to a religious stamp. It has no reasonable relation to the electoral processes.
When courts have struck down statutes and ordinances requiring separate seating arrangements in buses, separate restrooms, and separate restaurants in state-owned or operated airports and bus terminals, it was not because the evidence showed that negroes were restricted to uncomfortable seats in buses, dirty restrooms, and poor food. It was because they sat in buses behind a sign marked “colored”, entered restrooms under the sign “colored”, and could be served food only in restaurants for “colored”. It is the stamp of classification by race that makes the classification invidious.
On principle, the case before us cannot be distinguished from McDonald v. Key, 10 Cir., 1955, 224 F.2d 608, cert. den’d, 350 U.S. 895, 76 S.Ct. 153, 100 L.Ed. 787. In that case the court had before it an Oklahoma statute requiring that any “candidate who is other than of the White race, shall have his race designated upon the ballots in parenthesis after his name.” Under the Oklahoma constitution, the phrase “white race” includes not only members of that race, but members of all other races except the Negro race. The court held that this resulted in a denial of equality of treatment with respect to Negroes who run for office. As a practical matter, in Oklahoma the omission of any racial designation on the ballot amounted to the candidate identifying himself as a white man just as surely as a negro candidate would identify himself by the word “negro” after his name. The result was essentially the same result intended to be accomplished by the Louisiana statute. Act 538 of 1960 is somewhat more sophisticated in that there is superficial appearance of equality of treatment. The effect is the same in that candidates are classified by race, and the State is using the elective processes to furnish information and stimulus for racial discrimination in the voting booth.
The State’s imprimatur on racial distinctions on the ballot is no more valid than the State’s imprimatur on separate voting booths. In Anderson v. Courson, 1962, 203 F.Supp. 806, 813, the District Court for the Middle District of Georgia held that maintenance of racially segregated voting places deprived Negroes of equal protection of the law “in the matter of the exercise of the elective franchise, a function and prerogative of utmost importance in the process of government, and so intrinsically characteristic of the dignity of citizenship”.
Considering the extent of media of information today, it is highly unlikely that any voters will be confused by lack of racial identification of candidates on the ballot. Considering the number of parishes having a large Negro population, it is entirely likely that a racial stamp will help as much as it will hinder Negro candidates for public office in Louisiana. The vice in the law is not dependent on injury to Negroes. The vice in the law is the State’s placing its power and prestige behind a policy of racial classification inconsistent with the elective processes. Justice Harlan put his finger on it many years ago when he said that the “Constitution is color-blind”. If there is one area above all others where the Constitution is color-blind, it is the area of state action with respect to the ballot and the voting booth.
I respectfully dissent.