15th Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment
Ratified February 3, 1870
Verbatim
Exact text as ratified.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Plain English
A translation that drops archaic words but keeps the meaning, including the parts courts still argue about.
Section 1. The right of U.S. citizens to vote cannot be denied or limited by the federal government or by any state because of their race, color, or whether they were previously enslaved.
Section 2. Congress has the power to enforce this amendment by passing appropriate laws.
What this means for you
The Fifteenth Amendment guarantees that the right to vote cannot be denied because of race. It applies to both federal and state governments and is enforced by Congress through laws including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The amendment did not immediately guarantee Black Americans equal voting rights in practice. For nearly a century after ratification, Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, intimidation, and violence to keep Black citizens from voting. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the first federal law that effectively enforced the Fifteenth Amendment, almost 100 years after it was ratified.
Voting rights protections continue to be litigated. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states to get federal approval before changing voting laws, ruling that the formula for which states were covered was outdated. Other parts of the Voting Rights Act remain in effect, and Congress retains the power to pass new enforcement legislation.
About
The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870, completing the trio of Reconstruction Amendments along with the Thirteenth (abolishing slavery) and the Fourteenth (citizenship and equal protection).
The amendment's textual scope is broader than its historical context. "Previous condition of servitude" technically covers any form of involuntary servitude, not only chattel slavery, though in 1870 the overwhelming target was the disenfranchisement of formerly enslaved Black Americans.
The amendment did not prohibit voting restrictions based on sex (the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, addressed that), age (the Twenty-Sixth, ratified in 1971), or wealth (the Twenty-Fourth, ratified in 1964, banned poll taxes in federal elections). It also did not prohibit other voting restrictions that were used to disenfranchise Black voters in practice — literacy tests, residency requirements, criminal disenfranchisement, and others.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most important enforcement legislation passed under Section 2. It banned literacy tests, authorized federal observers in elections, and required certain jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to obtain federal preclearance before changing voting laws. The preclearance formula was struck down in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), though the rest of the law remains in effect.