Nixon v. Condon
The Supreme Court ruled that Texas could not sidestep its earlier ruling against an all-white Democratic primary simply by shifting the exclusion from the legislature to the party's state executive committee.
Because Texas law itself gave the committee its power to set voter qualifications, the committee's whites-only resolution counted as action by the state, and the state could not use race to bar a Black voter from the primary.
“Delegates of the State's power have discharged their official functions in such a way as to discriminate invidiously between white citizens and black.”
The Court's conclusion that the committee's exclusion of Black voters amounted to unconstitutional state discrimination.
How it got here: A federal trial court dismissed Nixon's damages suit against the election judges; the Fifth Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The Case in Depth
What happened
L.A. Nixon, a Black doctor in El Paso, was turned away from voting in the 1928 Texas Democratic primary. Texas had previously tried to bar Black voters from primaries by statute, but the Supreme Court struck that law down in Nixon v. Herndon. Texas then repealed the law and instead let the Democratic Party's state executive committee set voter qualifications, and the committee voted to admit only white voters.
The question before the Court
Could a state let a political party's executive committee, rather than the state legislature itself, bar Black voters from a primary election?
Why it matters
Black voters in Texas and other states with similar arrangements gained a second Supreme Court ruling blocking whites-only primaries, this time closing off the loophole of routing the exclusion through a party committee. The decision put pressure on states and parties to find other ways to justify all-white primaries, which is exactly what soon followed in later cases.
What changes now
The case was reversed and sent back to the lower courts for further proceedings consistent with the Court's ruling, meaning Nixon's damages claim could proceed. The decision did not resolve whether a political party with truly independent, non-statutory authority could still exclude Black voters from its primaries — a question the Court expressly left open and that returned to the Court two years later in Grovey v. Townsend.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly declined to decide whether a political party possesses inherent power, entirely apart from any state statute, to exclude Black voters from its primaries. It ruled only that because Texas law itself gave the committee its power, the committee's exclusion counted as action by the state.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice McReynolds
“The resolution of the Executive Committee was the voice of the party and took from appellant no right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution or laws.”The dissent's view that the committee acted as the party's private voice, not as the state.
Justice McReynolds argued the Democratic Executive Committee's resolution reflected the party's own voluntary choice, not state compulsion, since the 1927 statute merely recognized existing party authority rather than granting new power. He read Texas case law as showing that executive committees have long held customary authority to set membership qualifications independent of statute, so the exclusion was private action beyond the Fourteenth Amendment's reach and the judgment below should be affirmed.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court asked whether the Fourteenth Amendment, which restrains only state action and not purely private conduct, applied to the committee's whites-only resolution.
- The Court examined where the power to set party membership qualifications actually came from under Texas law, since a truly private party's internal membership rules would be beyond constitutional reach.
- The Court found that Texas's state convention, not the executive committee, normally holds whatever inherent power a party has to define its own membership, and the convention had never voted to exclude Black voters.
- Because the statute itself handed the committee an authority it did not otherwise possess, the committee's exclusion decision derived from the state's mandate rather than from any power delegated by the party.
- Applying the principle from Nixon v. Herndon that the state cannot use its own authority to enforce racial exclusion from primaries, the Court held that an entity wielding state-conferred power over party membership must act within the Constitution's guarantees of equality.
- The Court concluded that the committee's action was effectively state action that discriminated against Black voters, so it violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Nixon v. Herndon (273 U.S. 536)
The Court relied on its earlier ruling striking down a direct statutory ban on Black voters in primaries as the basis for this decision.