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U.S. Constitution Training › Constitutional Firsts: The First Cases on Every Article and Amendment

Lesson 12 of 12 · about 18 minutes

Amendments 16 to 27

You'll be able to

  • Explain how Pollock (1895) led to the Sixteenth Amendment and what Brushaber (1916) said the amendment changed
  • Describe the Article V challenges in Hawke v. Smith, the National Prohibition Cases, Dillon v. Gloss, Leser v. Garnett and Coleman v. Miller
  • Identify Harman v. Forssenius (1965) as the Court's stated first construction of the Twenty-fourth Amendment and distinguish it from Harper (1966)
  • Recognize which later amendments have no Supreme Court case we could find, and report that accurately

Start here: the short version

  • Two later amendments followed Supreme Court cases: the Sixteenth came after Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. (1895) and the Twenty-sixth after Oregon v. Mitchell (1970). Their stories start before they existed.
  • The earliest Supreme Court cases we found on the Sixteenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad (1916), the National Prohibition Cases (1920) and Leser v. Garnett (1922), mostly asked whether the amendment was valid and what it changed.
  • Harman v. Forssenius (1965) is the rare case that says outright it is the first: the Court wrote that it was called upon "to construe, for the first time, the Twenty-fourth Amendment."
  • The Twentieth, Twenty-second, Twenty-third and Twenty-fifth Amendments have no Supreme Court case interpreting them that we could find. The Twenty-fifth has been used several times by Presidents, but Section 4 has never been invoked.
  • The Twenty-seventh Amendment, proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992, was first tested in Boehner v. Anderson in federal court in Washington, D.C. (1992, affirmed 1994).

The twelve amendments covered here were ratified over 79 years, from 1913 to 1992. They change how the federal government raises money and how senators are chosen, start and end Prohibition, expand the vote to women, to residents of the District of Columbia for President, to people who cannot pay a poll tax and to 18 year olds, set the calendar and limits of presidential terms, and deal with presidential disability and congressional pay.

Many of them were litigated less than the older provisions, and some never. When a case did come, it often asked a question about Article V (was this amendment properly adopted?) rather than about the amendment's meaning. This lesson goes amendment by amendment. Where we could not find a case, we say so plainly.

The Sixteenth Amendment: the income tax (1913)

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XVI, passed by Congress July 2, 1909, ratified February 3, 1913 (National Archives transcription)

The case before the amendment: Pollock (1895)

Article I requires any "direct" tax to be apportioned among the states by population. In 1894 Congress passed an income tax. Charles Pollock, a Massachusetts shareholder of the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company of New York, sued the company and its directors to stop them from paying it.

In Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429, decided April 8, 1895, Chief Justice Fuller wrote that a tax on rents or income from real estate is a direct tax that must be apportioned, and that a tax on interest from municipal bonds burdened the states' power to borrow. The Justices were equally divided on the rest. On rehearing, in Pollock, 158 U.S. 601, decided May 20, 1895, the Court held that the tax on income from both real estate and personal property was a direct tax, and because the income tax sections formed "one entire scheme of taxation," all of them fell. Justice John Marshall Harlan was among the dissenters. Fourteen years later Congress proposed the Sixteenth Amendment.

The earliest case under the amendment: Brushaber (1916)

The case generally cited as the first major Supreme Court test is Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1, decided January 24, 1916. A Union Pacific stockholder sued to stop the company from complying with the income tax in the Tariff Act of 1913, raising due process, uniformity and retroactivity objections.

Chief Justice White, writing for the Court, rejected the challenges. His key point was about what the amendment did and did not do. It did not create a new power to tax income; Congress always had that power. The amendment's purpose, he wrote, was "to relieve all income taxes when imposed from apportionment," so that income taxes would no longer be judged by the source of the income, as Pollock had done.

Myth: The Sixteenth Amendment gave Congress the power to tax income for the first time.

The Supreme Court said the opposite in the earliest major case under the amendment. Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. (1916) held that the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation. Congress already had the power to tax incomes; the amendment removed the requirement, imposed by Pollock (1895), that a tax on income from property be apportioned among the states by population. The amendment's own text says "without apportionment."

The Seventeenth Amendment: popular election of senators (1913)

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XVII, passed by Congress May 13, 1912, ratified April 8, 1913 (National Archives transcription)

The Constitution Annotated lists only a handful of cases. The earliest it discusses on the merits is a lower federal court case, United States v. Aczel, 219 F. 917 (D. Ind. 1915), which held that a qualified voter's right to vote for a Senator comes from the U.S. Constitution, not only from state law. The earliest Supreme Court decision it describes applying the amendment is MacDougall v. Green, 335 U.S. 281 (1948), which held that an Illinois petition rule for new parties did not impair any Seventeenth Amendment right. MacDougall was later overruled on equal protection grounds by Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814 (1969). (Constitution Annotated, Seventeenth Amendment.)

The Eighteenth Amendment: Prohibition (1919)

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XVIII, Section 1, passed by Congress December 18, 1917, ratified January 16, 1919, repealed by Amendment XXI (National Archives transcription)

Ohio's referendum: Hawke v. Smith (1920)

The earliest Eighteenth Amendment case we found was really about Article V. Ohio's constitution let voters hold a referendum on the legislature's ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. A voter sued to stop the Ohio Secretary of State from spending public money on the referendum ballots. In Hawke v. Smith, 253 U.S. 221, decided June 1, 1920, Justice Day wrote for the Court that ratification by a state legislature is a federal function that comes from the Constitution itself, so a state cannot subject it to a popular referendum.

The National Prohibition Cases (1920)

Six days later the Court decided seven cases together as the National Prohibition Cases, 253 U.S. 350, decided June 7, 1920. Unusually, the Court gave no reasoned opinion. Justice Van Devanter announced numbered "conclusions of the Court." Among them: the amendment was within the Article V amending power and was part of the Constitution; the required two thirds vote in each house means two thirds of members present, assuming a quorum; state referendum provisions do not apply to ratification; and the "concurrent power" of Congress and the states to enforce it does not mean Congress needs state approval. The Volstead Act's definition of intoxicating liquor as beverages with one half of one percent alcohol or more was upheld. Chief Justice White concurred and criticized the lack of reasoning; Justice McKenna dissented, and Justice Clarke dissented in part.

The time limit: Dillon v. Gloss (1921)

The Eighteenth Amendment included a seven year ratification deadline in its text. Dillon, held under the National Prohibition Act for transporting liquor, argued that the deadline made the amendment invalid. In Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368, decided May 16, 1921, Justice Van Devanter wrote that Article V implies an amendment must be ratified within a reasonable time, that Congress may set a definite period, and that seven years was reasonable. The Court also held the amendment took effect when the last needed state ratified, on January 16, 1919, not when the Secretary of State proclaimed it.

The Nineteenth Amendment: women's suffrage (1920)

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 sex.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIX, passed by Congress June 4, 1919, ratified August 18, 1920 (National Archives transcription)

Before the amendment, the Court had rejected a constitutional right of women to vote. In Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162 (1875), Virginia Minor, a Missouri citizen, was refused registration in 1872 because she was a woman. The Court unanimously held that voting is not necessarily a privilege of citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Idaho connection. Idaho did not wait. A Congressional Research Service fact sheet lists Idaho among the states that granted women full suffrage before the Nineteenth Amendment, in 1896, through Article VI of the Idaho Constitution (CRS). Idaho ratified the Nineteenth Amendment on February 11, 1920 (National Park Service).

Example: two women register in Baltimore

In October 1920, two months after ratification, Cecilia Streett Waters and Mary D. Randolph registered to vote in Baltimore. Oscar Leser and others went to court to have their names struck from the rolls. Maryland's own constitution limited voting to men, and Maryland's legislature had rejected the Nineteenth Amendment.

The challengers threw every argument they could at the amendment. It added so many voters to a state's electorate, they said, that it could not be imposed without that state's consent. Several state constitutions limited their legislatures' power to ratify. And Tennessee and West Virginia, two of the ratifying states, had violated their own legislative rules.

The Maryland courts dismissed the suit, and in Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, decided February 27, 1922, the Supreme Court affirmed in an opinion by Justice Louis Brandeis. The size of the change was no objection: the Fifteenth Amendment had been valid in Maryland despite Maryland's rejection, and it was not merely a war measure. A state legislature ratifying an amendment performs a federal function, so state constitutional limits do not bind it. And the Secretary of State's official certification of ratification, based on the states' authenticated notices, was conclusive on the courts. Waters and Randolph stayed on the rolls.

The Twentieth Amendment: terms and succession (1933)

The Twentieth Amendment moved the start of presidential terms to January 20 and congressional terms to January 3, and provided for the death or failure to qualify of a President elect. We found no Supreme Court case interpreting it. Section 3 superseded part of the Twelfth Amendment, according to the National Archives notes.

The Twenty-first Amendment: repeal of Prohibition (1933)

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXI, Section 2, passed by Congress February 20, 1933, ratified December 5, 1933 (National Archives transcription)

The earliest Supreme Court case we found on Section 2 is State Board of Equalization v. Young's Market Co., 299 U.S. 59, decided November 9, 1936. California charged a $500 annual fee for importing beer. Wholesalers challenged it under the Commerce Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Brandeis wrote for the Court that Section 2 lets a state charge a fee for the privilege of importing beer, and that "A classification recognized by the Twenty-First Amendment cannot be deemed forbidden by the Fourteenth."

The leading case today points the other way on discrimination. In Granholm v. Heald, 544 U.S. 460 (2005), Justice Kennedy wrote for a 5 to 4 majority that Michigan and New York laws letting in state wineries, but not out of state wineries, ship directly to consumers violated the Commerce Clause and were not saved by the Twenty-first Amendment. Justices Stevens and Thomas wrote dissents.

The Twenty-second and Twenty-third Amendments (1951 and 1961)

The Twenty-second limits a President to two elections. The Twenty-third gives the District of Columbia electors for President and Vice President, no more than the least populous state. We found no Supreme Court case interpreting either amendment.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment: the poll tax (1964)

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXIV, Section 1, passed by Congress August 27, 1962, ratified January 23, 1964 (National Archives transcription)

Earlier, in Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937), Justice Butler had written for the Court that Georgia's $1 poll tax as a condition of registering to vote did not violate the Fourteenth or Nineteenth Amendments.

After the Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified, Virginia dropped the poll tax as an absolute requirement for federal elections but required federal voters either to pay it or to file a notarized or witnessed certificate of residence six months before each election. In Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, decided April 27, 1965, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: "We are called upon in this case to construe, for the first time, the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." The Court held the certificate requirement "repugnant to the Twenty-fourth Amendment."

The next year, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, decided March 24, 1966, the Court went further for state elections, which the Twenty-fourth Amendment does not cover. Justice William O. Douglas wrote for a 6 to 3 majority that a poll tax in state elections violates the Equal Protection Clause: "To that extent the Breedlove case is overruled." Justice Hugo Black dissented, as did Justice John M. Harlan, joined by Justice Potter Stewart.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment: presidential disability (1967)

The Twenty-fifth has been used, but not litigated in any case we found. The U.S. Senate notes that it was the basis for Gerald Ford's nomination as Vice President in 1973, and Nelson Rockefeller took the oath as Vice President on December 19, 1974 after Ford became President. (U.S. Senate.) The Congressional Research Service lists Section 3 transfers of power during medical procedures by Ronald Reagan in 1985 (informally), George W. Bush in 2002 and 2007, and Joseph Biden in 2021, and reports that Section 4, which lets the Vice President and Cabinet declare a President unable to serve, has never been implemented. (CRS.)

The Twenty-sixth Amendment: voting at 18 (1971)

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXVI, Section 1, passed by Congress March 23, 1971, ratified July 1, 1971 (National Archives transcription)

Like the Sixteenth, this amendment followed a Supreme Court decision. The Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970 lowered the voting age to 18 in all elections. In Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, decided December 21, 1970, a deeply divided Court, with Justice Black announcing the judgments, upheld the age 18 rule for federal elections 5 to 4 and struck it down for state and local elections 5 to 4. Justice Black was the only Justice in the majority both times. Congress proposed the amendment three months later, and it was ratified on July 1, 1971.

The earliest cases applying the amendment that the Constitution Annotated lists came in 1971, in a federal court in Texas (Ownby v. Dies, 337 F. Supp. 38 (E.D. Tex. 1971)) and the California Supreme Court (Jolicoeur v. Mihaly, 5 Cal. 3d 565 (1971)), both about where young voters and students could register. The only Supreme Court ruling on the amendment that the Constitution Annotated lists is Symm v. United States, 439 U.S. 1105 (1979), a summary affirmance without opinion of a ruling against a Texas registrar's residency questionnaire for students. (Constitution Annotated, Twenty-sixth Amendment.)

The Twenty-seventh Amendment: congressional pay (1992)

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXVII, originally proposed September 25, 1789, ratified May 7, 1992 (National Archives transcription)

The pay amendment was sent to the states with the Bill of Rights in 1789 and sat unratified for two centuries. In 1982 Gregory D. Watson, a University of Texas student, wrote a paper arguing that it was still pending because Congress had set no deadline. He received a C and then campaigned for ratification. Michigan became the 38th state on May 7, 1992, and Congress completed its formal acceptance on May 20, 1992. (Heritage Guide to the Constitution.)

The earliest case we found under the amendment came the same year. Representative John Boehner argued that the automatic cost of living raises in the Ethics Reform Act of 1989 violated it, because each annual adjustment was a new pay change without an intervening election. The district court rejected the challenge in Boehner v. Anderson, 809 F. Supp. 138 (D.D.C. 1992), and the D.C. Circuit affirmed in Boehner v. Anderson, 30 F.3d 156 (D.C. Cir. 1994). Assuming the amendment applied to a law passed before its ratification, the court held that the relevant "law" was the 1989 Act itself, not each adjustment, and that Act had taken effect after an election. (CRS Legal Sidebar.) A later challenge also failed in Schaffer v. Clinton, 240 F.3d 878 (10th Cir. 2001).

Article V cases these amendments produced

One more case belongs here because it was about a failed amendment. In Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, decided June 5, 1939, Kansas legislators challenged their state's 1937 ratification of the Child Labor Amendment, proposed in 1924. Kansas had rejected it in 1925, and in 1937 the state Senate split 20 to 20 before the Lieutenant Governor cast the deciding vote. Chief Justice Hughes wrote that the effect of a prior rejection and whether ratification came within a reasonable time are political questions for Congress, not the courts.

How to: find the first case on a later amendment yourself

  1. Start at the National Archives transcription of Amendments 11 to 27 and note the dates the amendment passed Congress and was ratified. No case can apply it before ratification, but a case may have prompted it.
  2. Open the matching essay in the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov, or the Cornell LII mirror). Look for phrases such as "first," "earliest" or a footnoted list of cases, and note which are Supreme Court cases and which are lower courts.
  3. Read the opinion on Justia. Check the decision date, the author and the vote. Search the opinion for "first time"; Harman v. Forssenius is an example of a Court saying so outright.
  4. Check whether the case was about meaning or about validity. Many early cases on these amendments, such as Leser and the National Prohibition Cases, were Article V challenges.
  5. If you find nothing, say so. "We found no Supreme Court case" is accurate and useful; "the amendment has never been litigated" is a stronger claim you should make only if a reliable source says it.

Summary table

ClauseFirst caseYearWhat kind of first
Sixteenth (income tax)Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429; 158 U.S. 6011895Case that prompted the amendment
SixteenthBrushaber v. Union Pacific R. Co., 240 U.S. 11916Generally cited as the first major Supreme Court interpretation
Seventeenth (senators)United States v. Aczel, 219 F. 917 (D. Ind.)1915Earliest lower court case discussed by the Constitution Annotated
SeventeenthMacDougall v. Green, 335 U.S. 2811948Earliest Supreme Court application we found (later overruled on other grounds)
Eighteenth (Prohibition)Hawke v. Smith, 253 U.S. 2211920Earliest Supreme Court case we found; about its ratification
EighteenthNational Prohibition Cases, 253 U.S. 3501920Earliest ruling we found on its validity and meaning
Nineteenth (women's suffrage)Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 1301922Earliest Supreme Court ruling we found; upheld its validity
Twentieth (terms)None foundNoneNo Supreme Court case found
Twenty-first, Section 2State Board of Equalization v. Young's Market Co., 299 U.S. 591936Earliest Supreme Court case we found
Twenty-second and Twenty-thirdNone foundNoneNo Supreme Court case found
Twenty-fourth (poll tax)Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 5281965Court states it is the first time it construed the amendment
Twenty-fifth (disability)None foundNoneUsed by Presidents; Section 4 never implemented
Twenty-sixth (age 18)Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 1121970Case that prompted the amendment
Twenty-sixthOwnby v. Dies (E.D. Tex.); Jolicoeur v. Mihaly (Cal.)1971Earliest cases applying it listed by the Constitution Annotated
Twenty-seventh (pay)Boehner v. Anderson, 809 F. Supp. 138; 30 F.3d 1561992; 1994First case we found (federal courts in D.C.)

If you report on this

When someone claims an amendment was never validly ratified, check whether the courts have already answered that kind of claim: Leser v. Garnett treated the Secretary of State's certification as conclusive, and Coleman v. Miller left timing questions to Congress. When you write about the income tax, quote Brushaber on what the Sixteenth Amendment changed rather than repeating that it created the tax power. For voting stories, keep the Twenty-fourth Amendment (federal elections, poll taxes) separate from Harper (state elections, equal protection). And when a later amendment has no Supreme Court case, say "we found no Supreme Court case" rather than inventing a first.

Go further

Check yourself

1. According to Brushaber v. Union Pacific (1916), what did the Sixteenth Amendment do?

2. Which case held that a state cannot put its legislature's ratification of a federal amendment to a popular referendum?

3. In Leser v. Garnett (1922), what did the Court treat as conclusive on whether the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified?

4. Which case did the Supreme Court describe as construing the Twenty-fourth Amendment for the first time?

5. What did Oregon v. Mitchell (1970) decide about the 1970 law lowering the voting age to 18?

6. Which part of the Twenty-fifth Amendment has never been implemented, according to the Congressional Research Service?

Terms in this lesson

Apportionment
Dividing a direct tax among the states by population. Pollock held a tax on income from property was a direct tax needing apportionment; the Sixteenth Amendment removed that requirement for income taxes.
Ratification deadline
A time limit for states to ratify a proposed amendment. Dillon v. Gloss (1921) held Congress may set one and that seven years was reasonable.
Political question
An issue courts leave to the elected branches. Coleman v. Miller (1939) treated the timeliness of ratification and the effect of a prior rejection as questions for Congress.
Poll tax
A fee paid as a condition of voting. The Twenty-fourth Amendment bars it in federal elections; Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) barred it in state elections under equal protection.
Summary affirmance
A Supreme Court ruling that affirms a lower court's judgment without a full opinion, as in Symm v. United States (1979) on student voters.

Verify independently

Every case, citation, vote count and quotation in this lesson was checked against a primary or reliable source in October 2026, but constitutions are amended, opinions are withdrawn and links move. Check the official text and the opinion itself before you rely on anything here.

Sources