Takeaway
In short, this case held that Congress may use criminal legislation to prevent state officials from administering state voting prerequisites in a racially discriminatory manner, because such conduct can nullify the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal voting access.
Given, a Delaware tax collector, was indicted under section 2 of the Enforcement Act of May 31, 1870. The statute required persons and officers charged by state law with furnishing citizens an opportunity to meet voting prerequisites to provide that opportunity equally, without discrimination based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
A jury returned guilty verdicts on five counts. Given moved in arrest of judgment, arguing that Congress lacked constitutional authority to enact the statute; that the statute did not cover his duties as a tax collector; and that, as a state officer, he could be held accountable only under Delaware law. Justice Strong denied the motion.
Issue #1
Whether Congress had constitutional authority under the Fifteenth Amendment to criminalize a refusal or knowing omission to give citizens an equal opportunity to satisfy state-law voting prerequisites.
Holding
Yes. Section 2 of the Enforcement Act of 1870 was appropriate legislation to enforce the voting right protected by the Fifteenth Amendment.
Reasoning
Justice Strong read the Fifteenth Amendment as securing a personal constitutional right: citizens may not be denied or abridged in voting because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Amendment did not itself establish uniform voter qualifications nationwide; states retained broad authority over suffrage. But they could not use those forbidden grounds to discriminate among citizens seeking to vote.
The Amendment's enforcement clause gave Congress effective authority to make that protection real. Reading the clause as permitting Congress to address only discriminatory statutes or official actions formally authorized by a state would leave the right vulnerable to evasion by local officers and private interference. Congress therefore could legislate against conduct that practically deprived citizens of their equal voting opportunity.
Strong relied by analogy on Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Ableman v. Booth. Those decisions recognized congressional authority to provide remedies and penalties to protect a constitutional right—the former right to recover fugitive enslaved persons—even though the original Constitution did not expressly provide a specific enforcement power. The Reconstruction Amendments provided still stronger support because they both recognized rights and expressly empowered Congress to enforce them.
The statute was appropriately directed at the practical means by which citizens became qualified to vote. Where a state makes completion of a prerequisite necessary to voting and assigns officials duties that enable citizens to complete it, Congress may prohibit those officials from performing those duties in a racially discriminatory way. Otherwise, a State could leave discriminatory local conduct unremedied and make the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee merely formal.
Issue #2
Whether a Delaware tax collector was a person or officer charged by state law with furnishing citizens an opportunity to meet a prerequisite to voting under the federal statute.
Holding
Yes. Because payment of an assessed county tax was a Delaware voting prerequisite and the collector alone could receive that tax, the collector fell within the statute's coverage.
Reasoning
Delaware's constitution made payment of an assessed county tax within the prescribed period a prerequisite to voting. Delaware law created the machinery for assessment and collection and assigned the tax collector the duty to receive the tax. Thus, the collector's performance directly determined whether an otherwise eligible citizen could satisfy that voting condition.
The collector's role was not merely incidental. He was required to collect taxes listed in his duplicate and report delinquents to the levy court. A false delinquency return, or a refusal or omission to collect a tax, could prevent a citizen from completing the tax-payment prerequisite and thereby disqualify that citizen from voting.
Accordingly, if a collector refused or knowingly failed to perform those duties because of a citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude, he denied the equal opportunity that the 1870 Act protected. The indictment was therefore not defective on the theory that a tax collector lay outside the statute.
Issue #3
Whether a state officer performing duties prescribed by state law is amenable to federal criminal law for a racially discriminatory failure to perform those duties.
Holding
Yes. Congress did not impose a new state-office duty; it validly made a discriminatory nonperformance of an existing state duty punishable when that nonperformance impaired a federally protected voting right.
Reasoning
Strong accepted that Congress could not simply commandeer state officers by assigning them new federal duties as state officials. But he concluded that the 1870 Act did something different: it regulated the discriminatory performance or nonperformance of duties that Delaware itself had already assigned to its officers.
An act or omission may violate both state and federal law. Delaware remained free to punish violations of its own tax-collection laws, while the United States could punish conduct that infringed the federal right to an equal opportunity to qualify for voting. The two sources of authority addressed distinct legal interests.
A contrary rule would make federal constitutional rights dependent on each State's willingness to protect them. Because the Fifteenth Amendment secured an individual right and empowered Congress to enforce it, state officials could not invoke their state-office status as immunity from federal law when they used their duties to effect racial discrimination.