Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections

In holding that all voters in a state must have equal access to state elections, Harper extended the logic of the landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision, Reynolds v. Sims, in which the Court stated the principle that all voters should have an equal opportunity to vote in state elections.

In the 1960s, the Virginia Constitution contained a provision providing that every resident 21 years of age and older would be assessed an annual poll tax of $1.50. Payment of the tax was a precondition to voting in state elections. A number of Virginia voters, including Anne E. Harper, challenged the constitutionality of the poll tax in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The district court followed Breedlove v. Suttles (1937), in which the Supreme Court stated the principle that all voters should have an equal opportunity to vote in state elections.

Although the right to vote in federal elections is written into Article I of the Constitution, the right to vote in state elections is not expressly spelled out in the nation's foundation document. Although some have argued that the right to vote at the state level is implicit in the First Amendment guarantee of free expression, Justice Douglas, writing for the Court, based his opinion on another part of the Constitution:

[I]t is enough to say that once the [voting] franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That is to say, the right of suffrage "is subject to the imposition of the state standards which are not discriminatory and which do not contradict any restriction that Congress, acting pursuant to its constitutional powers, has imposed."

Justice Douglas was quoting from the Court's opinion in Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, a 1960 case in which a state literacy voting prerequisite was upheld. But, he said, while a literacy test bears some relationship with the process of intelligent voting, "Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth nor to paying or not paying this [Virginia poll] tax or any other tax."

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states in part: "No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This passage has been interpreted to mean that no person or class of persons can be denied rights given to other persons or classes in similar circumstances. Extending the logic of the Court's decision in Harper, Douglas went on to suggest under the Equal Protection Clause that the poor might constitute a so-called "suspect classification," that is, a grouping that is inherently arbitrary. The Court automatically regards such a grouping as requiring the government to carry a heavy burden of proof in order to justify enacting them.

For the dissenting justices in Harper, however, although the Virginia poll tax was discriminatory, it was no more discriminatory than laws setting a minimum age to vote. The tax was for them permissible because--like the state literacy test in Lassiter--it bore a rational relationship to voting. It is rational to believe, wrote Black, that voters who pay a poll tax will be interested in furthering the state's welfare when they do exercise their voting franchise. Harlan wrote a dissent indicating that in his opinion the Equal Protection Clause gives states a great deal of latitude in shaping voter qualifications. Federal courts, Harlan thought, were not really in a position to judge when a state had properly tailored its voting laws to suit its own population. Like Black, Harlan felt that poll taxes, long a part of the nation's political structure, bore a rational relationship to voting.

In the long run, although Harper extended the meaning of Reynolds v. Sims, it had little impact in and of itself. Only three other states, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, used poll taxes as a prerequisite for voting at the time. The Supreme Court has never adopted poverty as a suspect classification.

Related Cases

• Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937).
• Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, 360 U.S. 45 (1960).
• Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964).