Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966)
Monday, November 30, 2009 at 7:36PM Read the opinion here.
Issue. Does a poll tax violate the Equal Protection Clause?
Background. Virginia imposed an annual poll tax of $1.50 for all those over 21. An individual had to pay the tax in order to vote. Individuals sued and claimed that the tax violated the Equal Protection Clause. A three-judge District Court panel rejected the claim based on the 1937 Supreme Court ruling Breedlove v. Suttles which unanimously held that a poll tax did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court reversed.
Court's Analysis. Whether the Constitution required States to enfranchise citizens is irrelevant for this decision since, once a State does give the right to vote, it must do so consistently with the Equal Protection Clause. Anytime a State makes the affluence of the voter a determinative factor for voting, it violated the Equal Protection Clause. There is no more fundamental right than voting and there is no relation between wealth or fee paying and exercising a fundamental right.
Even though the Court had ruled to the contrary previously, this Court is not bound by the political theories of the past. The Court recognizes:
In determining what lines are unconstitutionally discriminatory we have never been confined to historic notions of equality, any more than we have restricted due process to a fixed catalogue of what was at a given time deemed to be the limits of fundamental rights. Notions of what constitutes equal treatment for purposes of [equal protection] do change.