The Fifteenth Amendment's Prohibition against State Suffrage Restrictions Based upon Race Encompasses Ancestral Restrictions That Are Used as Substitutes for Race: Rice v. Cayetano

Authors

Tina L. Corcoran

Abstract

The Supreme Court of the United States held that State voter eligibility statutes that limit suffrage to only those persons meeting a statutorily defined ancestry are prohibited by the Fifteenth Amendment when the legislative purpose behind the ancestral definition is to treat those defined persons as a distinct people so that ancestry becomes a proxy for race.

Rice v. Cayetano, 120 S. Ct. 1044 (2000).

First Page

217

Recommended Citation

Tina L. Corcoran, The Fifteenth Amendment's Prohibition against State Suffrage Restrictions Based upon Race Encompasses Ancestral Restrictions That Are Used as Substitutes for Race: Rice v. Cayetano, 39 Duq. L. Rev. 217 (2000).
Available at: https://dsc.duq.edu/dlr/vol39/iss1/7