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.