[1] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eleven southern states established poll taxes as part of their disenfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites.

The Court noted that "a state violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard.

This ruling reversed a prior decision by the Court, Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937), which upheld the state's ability to impose poll taxes as within its powers.

Joined by Justice Potter Stewart, Justice John Marshall Harlan II dissented, arguing that the Court had allowed some forms of discriminatory voting qualifications without violating the equal protection clause, e.g., Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections (literacy test), Breedlove v. Suttles (poll tax on men), as long as it was rational.

As a textualist, he also criticized the majority for expanding the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment by using what he called the old "natural law due process formula".