Katzenbach v. Morgan New York City Board of Elections v. Morgan

• Citation: 16 L.Ed.2d 828,86 S.Ct. 1717,384 U.S. 641
• Decision Date: 13 June 1966
• Docket Number: Nos. 847,877,s. 847
• Parties: Nicholas de B. KATZENBACH, Attorney General of the United States, et al., Appellants, v. John P. MORGAN and Christine Morgan. NEW YORK CITY BOARD OF ELECTIONS, etc., Appellants, v. John P. MORGAN and Christine Morgan
• Court: United States Supreme Court

384 U.S. 641

86 S.Ct. 1717

16 L.Ed.2d 828

Nicholas de B. KATZENBACH, Attorney General of the United States, et al., Appellants,

v John P. MORGAN and Christine Morgan.

NEW YORK CITY BOARD OF ELECTIONS, etc., Appellants,

v. John P. MORGAN and Christine Morgan.

Nos. 847, 877.

Argued April 18, 1966.

Decided June 13, 1966.

[Syllabus from pages 641-642 intentionally omitted]

Sol. Gen. Thurgood Marshall and J. Lee Rankin, New York City, for appellants.

Alfred Avins, Memphis, Tenn., for appellees.

Rafael Hernandez Colon, Ponce, P.R., for Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as amicus curiae.

Jean M. Coon, Albany, N.Y., for State of New York, as amicus curiae.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

These cases concern the constitutionality of § 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.¹ That law, in the respects pertinent in these cases, provides that no person who has successfully completed the sixth primary grade in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in which the language of instruction was other than English shall be denied the right to vote in any election because of his inability to read or write English. Appellees, registered voters in New York City, brought this suit to challenge the constitutionality of § 4(e) insofar as it pro tanto prohibits the enforcement of the election laws of New York² requiring an ability to read and write English as a condition of voting. Under these laws many of the several hundred thousand New York City residents who have migrated there from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico had previously been denied the right to vote, and appellees attack § 4(e) insofar as it would enable many of these citizens to vote.³ Pursuant to § 14(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, appellees commenced this proceeding in the District Court for the District of Columbia seeking a declaration that § 4(e) is invalid and an injunction prohibiting appellants, the Attorney General of the United States and the New York City Board of Elections, from either enforcing or complying with s 4(e). ⁴ A three-judge district court was designated. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2282, 2284 (1964 ed.). Upon cross motions for summary judgment, that court, one judge dissenting, granted the declaratory and injunctive relief appellees sought. The court held that in enacting § 4(e) Congress exceeded the powers granted to it by the Constitution and therefore usurped powers reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. 247 F.Supp. 196. Appeals were taken directly to this Court, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1252, 1253 (1964 ed.) and we noted probable jurisdiction. 382 U.S. 1007, 86 S.Ct. 621, 15 L.Ed.2d 524. We reverse. We hold that, in the application challenged in these cases, § 4(e) is a proper exercise of the powers granted to Congress by § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment⁵ and that by force of the Supremacy Clause, Article VI, the New York English literacy requirement cannot be enforced to the extent that it is inconsistent with § 4(e).

Under the distribution of powers effected by the Constitution, the States establish qualifications for voting for state officers, and the qualifications established by the States for voting for members of the most numerous branch of the state legislature also determine who may vote for United States Representatives and Senators, Art. I, § 2; Seventeenth Amendment; Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651, 663, 4 S.Ct. 152, 28 L.Ed. 274. But, of course, the States have no power to grant or withhold the franchise on conditions that are forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment, or any other provision of the Constitution. Such exercises of state power are no more immune to the limitations of the Fourteenth Amendment than any other state action. The Equal Protection Clause itself has been held to forbid some state laws that restrict the right to vote.⁶ The Attorney General of the State of New York argues that an exercise of congressional power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment that prohibits the enforcement of a state law can only be sustained if the judicial branch determines that the state law is prohibited by the provisions of the Amendment that Congress sought to enforce. More specifically, he urges that § 4(e) cannot be sustained as appropriate legislation to enforce the Equal Protection Clause unless the judiciary decides—even with the guidance of a congressional judgment—that the application of the English literacy requirement prohibited by § 4(e) is forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause itself. We disagree. Neither the language nor history of § 5 supports such a construction.⁷ As was said with regard to § 5 in Ex parte Com. of Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 345, 25 L.Ed. 676. 'It is the power of Congress which has been enlarged. Congress is authorized to enforce the prohibitions by appropriate legislation. Some legislation is contemplated to make the amendments fully effective.' A construction of § 5 that would require a judicial determination that the enforcement of the state law precluded by Congress violated the Amendment, as a condition of sustaining the congressional enactment, would depreciate both congressional resourcefulness and congressional responsibility for implementing the Amendment.⁸ It would confine the legislative power in this context to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch was prepared to adjudge unconstitutional, or of merely informing the judgment of the judiciary by particularizing the 'majestic generalities' of § 1 of the Amendment. See Fay v. People of State of New York, 332 U.S. 261, 282—284, 67 S.Ct. 1613, 1624—1625, 91 L.Ed. 2043.

Thus our task in this case is not to determine whether the New York English literacy requirement as applied to deny the right to vote to a person who successfully completed the sixth grade in a Puerto Rican school violates the Equal Protection Clause. Accordingly, our decision in Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Election, 360 U.S. 45, 79 S.Ct. 985, 3 L.Ed.2d 1072, sustaining the North Carolina English literacy requirement as not in all circumstances prohibited by the first sections of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, is inapposite. Compare also Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347, 366, 35 S.Ct. 926, 931, 59 L.Ed. 1340; Camacho v. Doe, 31 Misc.2d 692, 221 N.Y.S.2d 262 (1958), aff'd 7 N.Y.2d 762, 194 N.Y.S.2d 33, 163 N.E.2d 140 (1959); Camacho v. Rogers, 199 F.Supp. 155 (D.C.S.D.N.Y.1961). Lassiter did not present the question before us here: Without regard to whether the judiciary would find that the Equal Protection Clause itself nullifies New York's English literacy requirement as so applied, could Congress prohibit the enforcement of the state law by legislating under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment? In answering this question, our task is limited to determining whether such legislation is, as required by § 5, appropriate legislation to enforce the Equal Protection Clause.

By including § 5 the draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, § 8, cl. 18.⁹ The classic formulation of the reach of those powers was established by Chief Justice Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421, 4 L.Ed. 579:

'Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.

Ex parte Com. of Virginia, 100 U.S., at 345—346, 25 L.Ed. 676, decided 12 years after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, held that congressional power under § 5 had this same broad scope:

'Whatever legislation is appropriate, that is, adapted to carry out the objects the amendments have in view, whatever tends to enforce submission to the prohibitions they contain, and to secure to all persons the enjoyment of perfect equality of civil rights and the equal protection of the laws against State denial or invasion, if not prohibited, is brought within the domain of congressional power.'

Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 311, 25 L.Ed. 664; Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313, 318, 25 L.Ed. 667. Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment grants Congress a similar power to enforce by 'appropriate legislation' the provisions of that amendment; and we recently held in State of South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 326, 86 S.Ct. 803, 817, 15 L.Ed.2d 769, that '(t)he basic test to be applied in a case involving § 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment is the same as in all cases concerning the express powers of Congress with relation to the reserved powers of the States.' That test was identified as the one formulated in McCulloch v. Maryland. See also James Everard's Breweries v. Day, 265 U.S. 545, 558—559, 44 S.Ct. 628, 631, 68 L.Ed. 1174 (Eighteenth Amendment). Thus the McCulloch v. Maryland standard is the measure of what constitutes 'appropriate legislation' under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Correctly viewed, § 5 is a positive grant of legislative power authorizing Congress to exercise its discretion in determining whether and what legislation is needed to secure the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment.

We therefore proceed to the consideration whether § 4(e) is 'appropriate legislation' to enforce the Equal Protection Clause, that is, under the McCulloch v. Maryland standard, whether § 4(e) may be regarded as an enactment to enforce the Equal Protection Clause, whether it is 'plainly adapted to that end' and whether it is not prohibited by but is consistent with 'the letter and spirit of the constitution.'¹⁰ There can be no doubt that § 4(e) may be regarded as an enactment to enforce the Equal Protection Clause. Congress explicitly declared that it enacted § 4(e) 'to secure the rights under the fourteenth amendment of persons educated in American-flag schools...