Gene Ham was a black man who was arrested on May 15, 1970, in Florence, South Carolina, due to four outstanding warrants that charged him with possession of drugs.

The court stated that Ham failed to carry his burden of showing that other questions should have been asked to assure a fair and impartial jury.

Writing for the majority, Justice William Rehnquist first addressed the South Carolina Supreme Court's dissent that concluded that Ham should have been allowed to question the jury based on the precedent set forth in Aldridge v. United States, 283 U.S. 308 (1931).

The Court agreed that Aldridge stood for the proposition that trial judges must allow interrogation of veniremen with respect to racial prejudice because of “essential demands of fairness.

However, Justice Douglas believed that the trial judge abused his discretion by not allowing the petitioner to ask potential jurors about their prejudice to hair growth.

Justice Douglas stated that denying the petitioner the ability to make such an inquiry precluded a trial by a neutral and impartial jury and thereby constituted reversible error.

He points out that “hair growth is symbolic to many of rebellion against traditional society and disapproval of the way the current power structure handles social problems,” and he further acknowledged that for some “people, nonconventional hair growth symbolizes an undesirable lifestyle characterized by unreliability, dishonesty, lack of moral values, communal (communist) tendencies, and the assumption of drug use.”[1] Douglas concluded that denying a petitioner the right to examine this aspect of prejudice was to also deny him an effective means of voir dire.

[1] Since the Ham decision, two cases have further clarified the adequacy of federal voir dire when there is a heightened risk of racial bias: Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U.S. 589 (1976), and Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182 (1981).

It held that the "mere fact that the victim of the crimes alleged was a white man and the defendants were Negroes" did not constitutionally compel an examination of racial bias.

The plurality in Rosales-Lopez held that in federal court, refusal to pose questions submitted by the defendant would be "reversible error only where the circumstances of the case indicate that there is a reasonable possibility that racial or ethnic prejudice might have influenced the jury."