Facts
The plaintiff, Jackson W. Giles, sued on behalf of more than five thousand black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama and himself in seeking to have the federal court require the state to register them to vote. The suit was brought in response to a number of provisions in the Alabama state constitution which combined to prevent blacks from being able to register. Giles was literate and had voted in Montgomery from 1871 to 1901.
One of the new provisions held that any person registered before January 1, 1903 (as most whites were) would thereafter be registered for life; but any person not registered at that time (as most blacks were not) would have to overcome a number of hurdles to be allowed to register. Among those hurdles was a test of the potential registrant's understanding of the duties and obligations of citizenship. This test was administered by white election officials, who conducted it in a subjective manner that resulted in most whites' being approved to register and most blacks being rejected from registering.
The U.S. District court dismissed the case on the grounds that the suit was not seeking enough in damages to bring it within the jurisdiction of the federal courts. At the time, a statute was in place requiring that cases brought under federal question jurisdiction satisfy an amount-in-controversy requirement of $2000. Giles had not specified any amount of monetary damages. The plaintiff appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read more about this topic: Giles V. Harris
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