The Fifteenth Amendment\u27s Prohibition against State Suffrage Restrictions Based upon Race Encompasses Ancestral Restrictions That Are Used as Substitutes for Race: \u3cem\u3eRice v. Cayetano\u3c/em\u3e

Abstract

The Supreme Court of the United States held that State voter eligibility statutes that limit suffrage to only those persons meeting a statutorily defined ancestry are prohibited by the Fifteenth Amendment when the legislative purpose behind the ancestral definition is to treat those defined persons as a distinct people so that ancestry becomes a proxy for race. Rice v. Cayetano, 120 S. Ct. 1044 (2000)