Mobile v. Bolden

More substantive were the appellees' claims under the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed all citizens equal protection, due process, and all privileges and immunities of U.S. citizens. However, the Court declared that the city had not denied African Americans their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, since there was no guarantee of proportional representation either stated or implied in that amendment. The language was unambiguous: "The fact is that the Court has sternly set its face against the claim, however phrased, that the Constitution somehow guarantees proportional representation." The right to participate in elections guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, wrote Stewart, "does not protect any `political group,' however defined, from electoral defeat."

The Court did not deny that the effect of Mobile's election laws had been to bar African Americans from participating in city government. However, in such cases, the action could only be declared discriminatory if there was no other reason for it besides denying African Americans their right to vote. Referring to Guinn v. United States (1915), in which the Supreme Court struck down a literacy requirement's "grandfather clause," Stewart wrote that such cases involved a statute in place for no possible reason other than disenfranchising African American citizens. No such exclusively discriminatory intent could be established for Mobile's election laws, even if they did arise from partly invidious motives.