Court Opinion

ID: 9430755
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:30.499629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:53.109152
License: Public Domain

*230Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Scalia joins, dissenting.
The threshold issue presented by this case is whether, consistently with the Constitution, a State may permit a voter to participate in elections to the Congress while preventing that same person from voting for candidates to the most numerous branch of the state legislature. If we respect the plain language of Article I, § 2, cl. 1, of the Constitution and the Seventeenth Amendment, the intent of the Framers, and the reasoning of the opinions in Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U. S. 112 (1970), we must answer that question in the negative.
Every person who votes in a federal election for a Member of the House of Representatives or for a United States Senator must be qualified to vote for candidates to the most numerous branch of the state legislature. The Constitution has imposed this condition of voter eligibility on congressional elections, since 17891 and on senatorial elections since the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913.2
As the Court recognizes, ante, at 227, a primary election is part of the process by which Members of the House and Senate are “chosen ... by the People.” U. S. Const., Art. I, § 2, cl. 1. Cf. United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 315 (1941). In Connecticut one of the qualifications for voters in Republican Party primary elections for the lower house of the state legislature is that the person be “on the last-completed enrolment list of such party in the municipality or voting district . . . .” Conn. Gen. Stat. §9-431 (1985). Thus, only enrolled Republicans may vote in the Republican primary for the state legislature.
*231The Court today holds, however, that pursuant to the Republican Party of Connecticut’s rules, the State must permit independent, as well as enrolled Republican, electors to vote in the Republican primary for the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States. This facial disparity between the qualifications for electors of House and Senate candidates and the more stringent qualifications for electors to the state legislature violates both Qualifications Clauses.
The Court does not dispute the fact that the plain language of the Constitution requires that voters in congressional and senatorial elections “shall have” the qualifications of voters in elections to the state legislature. The Court nevertheless separates the federal voter qualifications from their state counterparts, inexplicably treating the mandatory “shall have” language of the Clauses as though it means only that the federal voters “may but need not have” the qualifications of state voters. In support of this freewheeling interpretation of the Constitution, the Court relies on what it describes as the Framers’ purpose in enacting the first Qualification Clause and on the judgment in Oregon v. Mitchell, supra. Neither of these arguments withstands scrutiny.
The excerpts from the debate among the Framers quoted by the Court, ante, at 227-229, related to a motion made by Gouverneur Morris to amend a draft of proposed Art. I, § 1, that had been prepared by the Committee on Detail. To understand the full significance of that debate it is necessary first to consider the provision that Gouverneur Morris wanted to change and then to consider the nature of his proposed amendment.
Justice Stewart accurately summarized that background in his opinion in Oregon v. Mitchell, supra:
“An early draft of the Constitution provided that the States should fix the qualifications of voters in congressional elections subject to the proviso that these qualifications might ‘at any Time be altered and superseded by the Legislature of the United States. ’ The records of *232the Committee on Detail show that it was decided to strike the provision granting to Congress the authority to set voting qualifications and to add in its stead a clause making the qualifications 'the same from Time to Time as those of the Electors, in the several States, of the most numerous Branch of their own Legislatures.’ The proposed draft reported by the Committee on Detail to the Convention included the following:
“ 'The qualifications of the electors shall be the same, from time to time, as those of the electors in the several States, of the most numerous branch of their own legislatures.’ Art. IV, § 1.” 400 U. S., at 289 (concurring in part and dissenting in part) (footnotes omitted; emphasis added).
Thus, the draft that the Federal Convention of 1787 was considering when Gouvemeur Morris made his motion was abundantly clear — the qualifications of the federal electors “shall be the same” as the electors of the legislatures of the several States. J. Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention 449-450 (E. Scott ed. 1893). This provision would ensure uniformity of electors’ qualifications within each State, but would not impose a uniform nationwide standard.3
It was this clause that Gouverneur Morris proposed to strike in order to substitute a clause permitting Congress to prescribe the electoral qualifications or to adopt a provision “which would restrain the right of suffrage to freeholders.” Id., at 467. Not surprisingly, his proposal was defeated by a vote of 7 to 1 because it would have disenfranchised a large number of voters in States that did not impose a property qualification on the right to vote. Id., at 467, 468, 471-472. Despite the Court’s reliance on the concerns that led the *233Framers to reject the Morris proposal, they shed absolutely no light on the reasons why the Committee on Detail had previously decided that the voters’ qualifications in state and federal elections “shall be the same.”
The Court’s reliance on the holding in Oregon v. Mitchell is equally misguided. That case tested the constitutionality of certain parts of the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, 84 Stat. 314, including the section that lowered the minimum age of voters in both state and federal elections from 21 to 18. Four Members of the Court concluded that Congress had no such power;4 four other Members of the Court concluded that the entire statute was valid.5 Thus, the conclusions of all eight of those Justices were consistent with the proposition that the Constitution requires the same qualifications for state and federal elections.6 Only Justice Black concluded that the statute was invalid insofar as it applied to state elections but valid insofar as it applied to federal elections. 400 U. S., at 125-130.
Even Justice Black’s reasoning, however, supports a literal reading of the Qualifications Clause in the absence of a federal statute prescribing a different rule for federal elections. For he relied entirely on the provision in Art. I, § 4, that empowers Congress to alter a State’s regulations concerning the times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives. 400 U. S., at 119-124. In Justice *234Black’s opinion, the qualifications that the States prescribed for their own voters for state offices “were adopted for federal offices unless Congress directs otherwise under Art. I, §4.” Id., at 125.
In this case there is no federal statute that purports to authorize the State of Connecticut to prescribe different qualifications for state and federal elections. Thus, there is no authority whatsoever for the Court’s refusal to honor the plain language of the Qualifications Clauses. An interpretation of that language linking federal voters’ qualifications in each State to the States’ existing qualifications exactly matches James Madison’s understanding:
“The provision made by the Convention appears therefore, to be the best that lay within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State; because it is conformable to the standard already established, or which may be established by the State itself.” The Federalist No. 52, p. 354 (J. Cooke ed. 1961).
I respectfully dissent.

 Article I, §2, cl. 1, provides: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”

 “The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.”

 James Wilson referred to this part of the Report of the Committee on Detail as “well considered,” and “he did not think it could be changed for the better. It was difficult to form any uniform rule of qualifications, for all the States.” J. Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention 467 (E. Scott ed. 1893).

 See opinion of Justice Harlan, 400 U. S., at 152, 212-213 (concurring in part and dissenting in part), and opinion of Justice Stewart, id., at 281, 287-289 (joined by Burger, C. J., and Blackmun, J.).

 See opinion of Justice Douglas, id., at 135, 141-144, and the joint opinion, id., at 229, 280-281 (opinion of Brennan, White, and Marshall, JJ.).

 This was certainly the view of Justice Harlan, see id., at 210-211, and of Justice Stewart and the two Justices who joined his opinion, see id., at 287-290. As Justice Stewart observed: “The Constitution thus adopts as the federal standard the standard which each State has chosen for itself.” Id., at 288. The opinions of Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan are silent on the issue.