Editing Literacy test (section)

==Voting==

From the 1890s to the 1960s, many state governments administered literacy tests to prospective voters, to test their literacy in order to vote. The first state to establish literacy tests in the United States was Connecticut.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://connecticuthistory.org/literacy-tests-and-the-right-to-vote/|title = Literacy Tests and the Right to Vote|date = 2 November 2020}}</ref>

State legislatures employed literacy tests as part of the voter registration process starting in the late 19th century. Literacy tests, along with [[poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]], residency and property restrictions, and extra-legal activities (violence and intimidation)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm|title=Civil Rights Movement -- Literacy Tests & Voter Applications|website=www.crmvet.org}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=June 2020}} were all used to deny [[suffrage]] to [[African Americans]].

The first formal voter literacy tests were introduced in 1890. At first, whites were generally exempted from the literacy test if they met alternate requirements that in practice excluded [[black people]], such as a [[grandfather clause]], or a finding of "[[good moral character]]", the latter's testimony of which was often asked only of white people.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}} Some locales administered separate literacy tests, with a more simplified literacy tests being administered to whites who had registered to vote.{{citation needed|date=August 2024}}

In ''[[Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections]]'' (1959), the [[U.S. Supreme Court]] held that literacy tests were not necessarily violations of [[Equal Protection Clause]] of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] nor of the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifteenth Amendment]]. Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to do so by federal legislation in the 1960s. The [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] stated that literacy tests used as a qualification for voting in federal elections be administered wholly in writing and only to persons who had not obtained a sixth grade education. 

To curtail the use of literacy tests, Congress enacted the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]]. The Act prohibited jurisdictions from administering literacy tests, among other measures, to citizens who attained a sixth-grade education in an American school in which the predominant language was Spanish, such as schools in [[Puerto Rico]].<ref>Voting Rights Act of 1965 § 4(e); {{usc|52|10303(e)}} (formerly 42 U.S.C. § 1973b(e))</ref> The Supreme Court upheld this provision in ''[[Katzenbach v. Morgan]]'' (1966). Although the Court had earlier held in ''Lassiter'' that literacy tests did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment,<ref>''[[Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections]]'', {{ussc|360|45|1959}}</ref> in ''Morgan'' the Court held that [[United States Congress|Congress]] could enforce Fourteenth Amendment rights—such as the right to vote—by prohibiting conduct it deemed to interfere with such rights, even if that conduct may not be independently unconstitutional.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Buss|first=William G.|title=Federalism, Separation of Powers, and the Demise of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act|journal=Iowa Law Review|date=January 1998|volume=83| pages=405–406|url=http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/ilr83&div=19|access-date=January 7, 2014}} {{subscription required|s}}</ref><ref>''[[Katzenbach v. Morgan]]'', {{ussc|384|641|1966}}, pp. 652–656</ref>

As originally enacted, the Voting Rights Act also suspended the use of literacy tests in all jurisdictions in which less than 50% of voting-age residents were registered as of November 1, 1964, or had voted in the [[1964 United States presidential election|1964 presidential election]]. Congress amended the Act in 1970 and expanded the ban on literacy tests to the entire country.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Williamson|first=Richard A.|title=The 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act: A Statutory Analysis of the Revised Bailout Provisions|journal=Washington University Law Review|year=1984|volume=62|issue=1|pages=5–9|url=http://digitalcommons.law.wustl.edu/lawreview/vol62/iss1/2/|access-date=August 29, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921060158/http://digitalcommons.law.wustl.edu/lawreview/vol62/iss1/2/|archive-date=September 21, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref> The Supreme Court then upheld the ban as constitutional in ''[[Oregon v. Mitchell]]'' (1970), but just for federal elections. The Court was deeply divided in this case, and a majority of justices did not agree on a rationale for the holding.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Tok ji|first=Daniel P.|title=Intent and Its Alternatives: Defending the New Voting Rights Act|journal=Alabama Law Review|year=2006|volume=58|page=353|url=http://www.law.ua.edu/pubs/lrarticles/Volume%2058/Issue%202/tokaji.pdf|access-date=July 29, 2015}}</ref><ref>''[[Oregon v. Mitchell]]'', {{ussc|400|112|1970}}, pp. 188–121</ref>