Citations 238 U.S. 368 (more) Period 1913 – 1915 | Majority White | |
Full case name Charles E. Myers and A. Claude Kalmey, Plffs. in Err., v. John B. Anderson; Charles E. Myers and A. Claude Kalmey, Plffs. in Err., v. William H. Howard; Charles E. Myers and A. Claude Kalmey, Plffs. in Err., v. Robert Brown | ||
Myers v. Anderson, 238 U.S. 368 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held Maryland state officials liable for civil damages for enforcing a grandfather clause. Grandfather clauses exempted voters from requirements such as poll taxes and literacy tests if their grandfathers had been registered voters, and were largely designed to disenfranchise former black slaves and their descendants. Despite striking down the Maryland law as discriminatory, the court noted that economic discrimination in the form of property requirements should be presumed to be "free from constitutional objection."
Myers was a companion case to Guinn v. United States (1915), which struck down an Oklahoma grandfather clause that effectively exempted white voters from a literacy test, finding it to be discriminatory and a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.