United States v. Reese

United States v. Reese
Argued January 30–31, 1876
Decided March 27, 1876
Full case nameUnited States v. Reese
Citations92 U.S. 214 (more)
23 L. Ed. 563; 1875 U.S. LEXIS 1750
Court membership
Chief Justice
Morrison Waite
Associate Justices
Nathan Clifford · Noah H. Swayne
Samuel F. Miller · David Davis
Stephen J. Field · William Strong
Joseph P. Bradley · Ward Hunt
Case opinions
MajorityWaite, joined by Swayne, Miller, Davis, Field, Strong, and Bradley
DissentClifford
DissentHunt
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XV

United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214 (1876), was a voting rights case in which the United States Supreme Court narrowly construed the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that suffrage for citizens can not be restricted due to race, color or the individual having previously been a slave.

This was the Supreme court voting rights case under the Fifteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Act of 1870. A Kentucky electoral official had refused to register an African‐American's vote in a municipal election and was indicted under two sections of the 1870 act: section 1 required that administrative preliminaries to elections be conducted without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude; section 2 forbade wrongful refusal to register votes where a prerequisite step “required as foresaid” had been omitted.

The Court held that the Fifteenth Amendment did not confer the right of suffrage, but it prohibited exclusion from voting on racial grounds. The justices invalidated the operative section 3 of the Enforcement Act since it did not repeat the amendment's words about race, color, and servitude. They ruled that the section exceeded the scope of the Fifteenth Amendment.


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