s inferior to
that afforded by the University of Texas Law School and hence that the
equal protection clause required that a qualified applicant be admitted
to the latter. In McLaurin _v._ Oklahoma State Regents[1170] the Court
held that enforced segregation of a Negro student admitted to a State
university was invalid because it handicapped him in the pursuit of
effective graduate instruction.

POLITICAL RIGHTS

In conjunction with the Fifteenth Amendment the equal protection clause
has played an important role in cases involving various expedients
devised to deprive Negro citizens of the right of suffrage. Attempts
have also been made, but thus far without success, to invoke this clause
against other forms of political inequality. The principal devices
employed to prevent voting by Negroes have been grandfather clauses,
educational qualifications, registration requirements and restrictions
on membership in a political party. Grandfather clauses exempting
persons qualified as electors before 1866 and their descendants from
requirements applicable to other voters, were held to violate the
Fifteenth Amendment.[1171] Educational qualifications which did not on
their face discriminate between white and Negro voters were sustained in
the absence of a showing that their actual administration was
evil.[1172] In 1903 in a suit charging that the registration procedure
prescribed by statute was fraudulently designed to prevent Negroes from
voting, the Court, in an opinion written by Justice Holmes, refused to
order the registration of an allegedly qualified Negro, on the whimsical
ground that to do so would make the Court a party to the fraudulent
plan.[1173] The opinion was careful to state that "we are not prepared
to say that an action at law could not be maintained on the facts
alleged in the bill." Such an action was brought some years later in
Oklahoma under a registration law enacted after its "grandfather"
statute had been held unconstitutional. Registration was not necessary
for persons who had voted at the previous election under the invalid
statute. Other persons were required to register during a twelve day
period or be forever disfranchised. A colored citizen who was refused
the right to vote in 1934 because of failure to register during the
prescribed period in 1916, was held to have a cause of action for
damages against the election officials under the Civil Rights Act of
1871. In the opinion of the Court reve