It has long been established that a State may not impose a penalty upon those who exercise a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Comm'n of California, 271 U.S. 583 . "Constitutional rights would be of little value if they could be . . . indirectly denied," Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 664 , or "manipulated out of existence." Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 345 . Significantly, the Twenty-fourth Amendment does not merely insure that the franchise shall not be "denied" by reason of failure to pay the poll tax; it expressly guarantees that the right to vote shall not be "denied or abridged" for that reason. Thus, like the Fifteenth Amendment, the Twenty-fourth "nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes" of impairing [380 U.S. 528, 541] the right guaranteed. Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 . "It hits onerous procedural requirements which effectively handicap exercise of the franchise" by those claiming the constitutional immunity. Ibid.; cf. Gray v. Johnson, 234 F. Supp. 743 (D.C. S. D. Miss.).
Get ready.
And that comment was in no means a bad pun regarding alternate lifestylers....