Case: United States v. State of Louisiana

This case is about the Louisiana Board of Registration enabling Parish Registrars to use interpretation tests, which deprived African American citizens in Louisiana of their right to vote. On December 28, 1961, the U.S. Attorney General filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana against the State of Louisiana, the Board of Registration of the State of Louisiana (both as an organization and three members in their individual capacities), and Hugh E. Cutrer, Jr., the director and ex officio secretary of the Board of Registration. The U.S. Attorney General alleged that the defendants’ discriminatory practices violated the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendments, and sought an injunction against the practices. Circuit Judge John Minor Wisdom was assigned to this case.

The U.S. Attorney General's claims were based on the following events. In 1898, the Louisiana Constitution established literacy and property requirements to voter registration, with a “grandfather clause” that exempted all individuals–and their progeny–entitled to vote on or before January 1, 1867. As a result, the number of African American registered voters in Louisiana decreased from 44 percent before 1898 to only 0.60 percent by 1910. In 1921, the grandfather clause was invalidated by the Fifteenth Amendment, so Louisiana adopted an interpretation test in its new Constitution. Following the Supreme Court’s desegregation rulings in the 1950s, local citizens councils challenged the registration status of thousands of African American voters on the grounds that they did not satisfy all of the registration laws that were in existence at the time they registered. As a result, thousands of African American voters were purged. 

In October 1956, the Parish Registrars strictly applied the interpretation test for voter registration exclusively to African American applicants in twenty-one parishes. This test included reading and writing from difficult portions of the Louisiana Constitution to the Parish Registrars’ satisfaction. Registrars held full discretion in determining voter eligibility, and the Louisiana Constitution provided no objective standards for administering the test. Parish Registrars grossly abused their discretion by disproportionately rejecting African American applicants’ reasonable interpretations of constitutional provisions. Concurrently, the defendant Registrars readily presented white applicants with easier constitutional provisions, accepted inaccurate answers, and in some cases revealed sample answers. These discriminatory acts were part of a pattern to disenfranchise African American voters. In twenty-one parishes where the interpretation test was used, white registered voters increased from 161,069 to 162,427, while African American registered voters decreased from 25,361 to 10,256. Up until 1962, Parish Registrars registered 8.6 percent of African American voter applicants compared to 66.1 percent of White voter applicants.

In its opinion, the Court concluded that this interpretation test was unconstitutional due to its unlawful legislative purpose, administration, and discriminatory effect, in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Court also found that Defendants racially discriminated against African American voters by rejecting their applications, and by using humiliation to dissuade other African American voters from seeking registration. Defendants were enjoined from enforcing the interpretation test in Louisiana parishes until there was a general re-registration of all voters, or until the Court was satisfied that the interpretation test no longer had discriminatory effects. This injunction specifically applied to the registration of all persons who satisfied age and residency requirements in the parishes prior to August 3, 1962. This case is closed.