Hunter v. Underwood
Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously invalidated the criminal disenfranchisement provision of § 182 of the Alabama Constitution as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.[1] Carmen Edwards, an African-American, and Victor Underwood, a white man, had been convicted for the misdemeanor of presenting a worthless check.At the opening address, the chairman of the convention claimed that its purpose was, "within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State".Instead, the court noted that the enumerated misdemeanors in the constitution had been chosen with some care, so that they covered many lesser offenses for which mainly black people were convicted, such as petty larceny, while omitting what the court judged to be more serious offenses such as "second-degree manslaughter, assault on a police officer, mailing pornography, and aiding the escape of a misdemeanant".In the Court's opinion, this established discrimination against Afro-Americans as a major purpose of the constitutional reform (both in words and deeds).