Nixon v. Herndon
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| Nixon v. Herndon | |||||||||||||
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| Argued January 4, 1927 Decided March 7, 1927 |
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| Holding | |||||||||||||
| A Texas law prohibiting blacks from voting in the Texas Democratic primary violated the Fourteenth Amendment. | |||||||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: William Howard Taft Associate Justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Willis Van Devanter, James Clark McReynolds, Louis Brandeis, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, Edward Terry Sanford, Harlan Fiske Stone |
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| Case opinions | |||||||||||||
| Majority by: Holmes Joined by: Taft, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Sutherland, Butler, Sanford, Stone |
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| Laws applied | |||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. XIV | |||||||||||||
Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U.S. 536 (1927), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court struck down a Texas law which forbade blacks from voting in the Texas Democratic primary.
Nixon, a black man, sought to vote in the Democratic primary of 1924 in El Paso, Texas. The defendants, who were magistrates in charge of elections, prevented him from doing so on the basis of a Texas statute which provided that "in no event shall a negro be eligible to participate in a Democratic party primary election held in the State of Texas." Nixon sought an injunction against the statute in federal district court. The district court dismissed the suit, and Nixon appealed to the Supreme Court. He argued that the statute violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The defendants argued that the Court lacked jurisdiction over the issue, as it was a political question.
The unanimous Court, speaking through Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, rejected the argument that the political question doctrine barred the Court from deciding the case. The argument, said the Court, was "little more than a play upon words." While the injury which the plaintiff alleged "involved political action," his suit "allege[d] and s[ought] to recover for private damage."
The Court then turned to the merits of the suit. It stated that it was unnecessary to discuss whether the statute violated the Fifteenth Amendment, "because it seems to us hard to imagine a more direct and obvious infringement of the Fourteenth." The Court continued:
| “ | The [Fourteenth Amendment] ... was passed, as we know, with a special intent to protect the blacks from discrimination against them. ... The statute of Texas ... assumes to forbid negroes to take part in a primary election the importance of which we have indicated, discriminating against them by the distinction of color alone. States may do a good deal of classifying that it is difficult to believe rational, but there are limits, and it is too clear for extended argument that color cannot be made the basis of a statutory classification affecting the right set up in this case. | ” |
The Court reversed the district court's dismissal of the suit.
Five years later, after Texas enacted a new statute to replace the old, invalidated one, Nixon reappeared before the Supreme Court. See Nixon v. Condon (1932).
