Facts
Prior to the 1960s, many states and municipalities in the United States used literacy tests in order to disenfranchise minorities. In 1959, the U.S. Supreme Court held that literacy tests were not necessarily violations of Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment nor of the Fifteenth Amendment. Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board (1959).
In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which sought to safeguard the voting rights of previously disenfranchised minorities. Among other provisions, the Voting Rights Act made some literacy tests illegal. Section 4 (e) was aimed at securing the franchisement of New York City's large Puerto Rican population, and "provides that no person who has completed the sixth grade in a public school, or an accredited private school, in Puerto Rico in which the language of instruction was other than English shall be disfranchised for inability to read or write English."
Registered voters in the state of New York brought suit, alleging that Congress exceeded its powers of enforcement under the 14th Amendment and alleging that Congress infringed on rights reserved to states by the 10th Amendment.
Read more about this topic: Katzenbach V. Morgan
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn’t be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)