Nixon v. Herndon

Nixon v. Herndon
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 4, 1927 Decided March 7, 1927
Full case name	L.A. Nixon v. C.C. Herndon and another, Judges of Elections
Citations	273 U.S. 536 (more) 47 S. Ct. 446; 71 L. Ed. 759
Case history
Prior	Error to the District Court of the United States for Western District of Texas
Holding
A Texas law prohibiting blacks from voting in the Texas Democratic Party primary violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice William H. Taft Associate Justices Oliver W. Holmes Jr. · Willis Van Devanter James C. McReynolds · Louis Brandeis George Sutherland · Pierce Butler Edward T. Sanford · Harlan F. Stone
Case opinion
Majority	Holmes, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U.S. 536 (1927), was a United States Supreme Court decision which struck down a 1923 Texas law forbidding blacks from voting in the Texas Democratic Party primary.^[1] Due to the limited amount of Republican Party activity in Texas at the time following the suppression of black voting through poll taxes, the Democratic Party primary was essentially the only competitive process and chance to choose candidates for the Senate, House of Representatives and state offices.

This case was one of four supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that challenged the Texas Democratic Party's all-white primary, which was finally prohibited in the Supreme Court ruling Smith v. Allwright in 1944.