Whether any amendment to a law originally adopted for an impermissible racially discriminatory purpose, no matter how minor the amendment and no matter the historical context, cleanses the law of its racist origins for Fourteenth Amendment purposes unless the party challenging the law can prove that the amendment itself was motivated by racial discrimination

QUESTION PRESENTED Petitioners are African-American citizens of Mississippi who are disfranchised by a provision of Mississippi’s Constitution that was adopted in 1890 for the express purpose of “obstruct[ing] the exercise of the franchise by the negro race.” Ratliff v. Beale, 20 So. 865, 868 (Miss. 1896). This Court struck down a materially identical provision of Alabama’s 1901 constitution in Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985). Yet in this case, the Fifth Circuit, in a deeply divided en banc decision, upheld Mississippi’s 1890 disfranchisement provision on the ground that voters, in approving minor amendments to the provision in 1950 and 1968 that left most of the provision untouched and in its original form, cleansed the original provision of its racially discriminatory taint. The question presented is: Whether any amendment to a law originally adopted for an impermissible racially discriminatory purpose, no matter how minor the amendment and no matter the historical context, cleanses the law of its racist origins for Fourteenth Amendment purposes unless the party challenging the law can prove that the amendment itself was motivated by racial discrimination.