No, this rule is unconstitutional. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution clearly says that no one can be denied the right to vote because of their race. Oklahoma's 'grandfather clause' was a sneaky trick to get around this rule. The state picked the date January 1, 1866, on purpose, because it knew that Black people were not allowed to vote then. The court saw right through this and said the rule's only purpose was to be racist. Because the reading test was tied to the racist 'grandfather clause,' the whole law was thrown out.

Yes, the new voting rule in Oklahoma is not okay because it's like bringing back old unfair rules that the Fifteenth Amendment got rid of. The part of the rule that makes people take a reading test can't be used by itself because it's tied to the unfair part, the 'grandfather clause'. The Court pointed out that this clause was clearly meant to get around the Fifteenth Amendment and that's why it's not allowed.

—striking down Oklahoma constitutional provision excluding lineal descendants of persons entitled to vote prior to January 1, 1866, from being subject to literacy test as a precondition to voting on grounds that provision "by necessary result re-creates and perpetuates the very conditions which the [Fifteenth] Amendment was intended to destroy

In Guinn the Court observed that an Oklahoma "Grandfather Clause" statute could have "no discernible reason other than the purpose to disregard the prohibitions of the [Fifteenth] Amendment,"

Br. at 76, and the authority he provides that found certain grandfather clauses unconstitutional in the voting context concluded that the statutes were unconstitutional because they sought to avoid the import of the Fifteenth Amendment.

—was the first of seven decisions in which the Court held or assumed that the right to vote in federal elections was protected by this legislation because it was a right `granted or secured'by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

For example, this Court struck down the so-called "grandfather clause" of the Oklahoma Constitution as discriminatory against Negroes although that clause was by its terms nondiscriminatory.

—invalidating, under the Fifteenth Amendment, statute imposing a literacy requirement on voters that contained a "grandfather clause" applicable to individuals and their lineal descendants entitled to vote "on [or prior to] January 1, 1866" because it could not be explained except as an attempt to circumvent the amendment

Sometimes a clear pattern, unexplainable on grounds other than race, emerges from the effect of the state action even when the governing legislation appears neutral on its face.

—holding unconstitutional a statute having the effect of subjecting all black citizens, but virtually no white citizens, to a literacy test in order to vote in state elections

This, like the kindred question of the severability of a statute of the state, is a question of state law.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, survey conducted September 21–October 4, 2006, and reported in “Who Votes, Who Doesn' t, and Why,” released October 28, 2006. 6.

Yes, the state constitutional amendment violates the Fifteenth Amendment. A state law that establishes a voting standard based on conditions existing prior to the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, which in effect revives the very racial discrimination the Amendment was designed to prohibit, is void. The Fifteenth Amendment is self-executing and strikes down any state suffrage scheme that denies or abridges the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Oklahoma amendment's 'grandfather clause' uses the date of January 1, 1866, as a standard, a time before the Fifteenth Amendment's ratification when Black citizens were systematically disenfranchised. The Court found no rational basis for this standard other than the purpose to discriminate, concluding it was a transparent attempt to evade the Amendment's command. Because the literacy test was inextricably linked to this unconstitutional exemption and designed to operate in conjunction with it, the entire suffrage provision is unconstitutional.

Yes, the Oklahoma suffrage amendment is invalid under the Fifteenth Amendment because it creates a voting standard based on conditions existing before the Amendment's adoption, effectively discriminating on the basis of race. The literacy test cannot survive independently as it is directly associated with the discriminatory 'grandfather clause'. The Court recognized that the clause had no discernible reason other than to disregard the prohibitions of the Fifteenth Amendment and that such statutes are unconstitutional because they seek to avoid the import of the Amendment.

Guinn v. United States

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