Life Without the Vote
Life Without Fair Courts Editorial Cartoon Series by Mikhaela Reid
Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15, 395 U.S. 621 (1969).
Plaintiff: Morris Kramer
Defendant: the Union Free School District No. 15 of New York
Issue: Can a school board deny a citizen the right to vote in school board elections if he does not meet certain arbitrary requirements?
Case Summary
As a registered voter in the state of New York, Morris Kramer didn’t think his right to vote in a school board election would be questioned. But New York had a law on the books stating that Kramer — and other residents who, like him, didn’t have children or own or lease property in the district — couldn’t vote in school board elections. Kramer turned to the court system and took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He argued that the state violated his constitutional right to equal protection.
The Supreme Court justices ruled that the state could not restrict the right to vote in school board elections only to those people it deemed to have an interest in the election. This amounted to the blanket disenfranchisement of specific groups of people.
As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the opinion, “statutes distributing the franchise constitute the foundation of our representative society. Any unjustified discrimination in determining who may participate in political affairs or in the selection of public officials undermines the legitimacy of representative government.”
