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Smith v. Allwright

Supreme Court of the United States · 1944 · Constitutional Law

Constitutional LawFifteenth AmendmentState ActionPrimary ElectionsVoting Rightswhite primarystate actionFifteenth Amendment

Facts

Petitioner was a Negro citizen and qualified elector of a Harris County, Texas precinct who sought to vote in the July 27, 1940 Democratic primary for nominations for United States Senate, House of Representatives, Governor, and other state offices. Respondents, the precinct election judges, refused to give him a ballot or let him vote solely because of his race. They acted pursuant to a 1932 Texas Democratic Party convention resolution limiting party membership, and thus participation in its primaries, to white citizens otherwise qualified to vote. Texas law extensively regulated primary elections, required major parties to use primaries for nominations, prescribed party machinery and primary procedures, and made party nominees the practical candidates for the general election ballot.

Issue

Whether the exclusion of Black voters from the Texas Democratic primary pursuant to a party convention resolution was private party action or state action, and therefore whether that exclusion violated the Fifteenth Amendment. More specifically, the question was whether Texas's statutory primary system made the party's restriction on participation attributable to the State.

Rule

When a State makes a primary election an integral part of the machinery for choosing public officials and delegates to a political party the power to determine who may participate in that primary, the party's exclusion of voters is state action. Under the Fifteenth Amendment, a State may not deny or abridge the right to vote in such a primary on account of race.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

Ohio law requires any political party that received more than 15% of the vote in the last gubernatorial election to choose its nominees through a state-regulated primary. The law lets each party's state committee decide who may vote in that primary, and only certified primary winners appear on the general-election ballot as that party's nominees. The Lakeview Party adopts a rule excluding Black voters from its primary in Cleveland.

If a qualified Black voter is denied a primary ballot under that rule, which is the strongest constitutional analysis?

Explanation. The majority rule is that when state law makes a primary an integral part of the machinery for choosing public officials and entrusts the party with determining who may participate, the party acts as an agency of the State for that function. A racial exclusion in such a primary is therefore state action that abridges the right to vote on account of race, violating the Fifteenth Amendment.