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Opinion of Stevens, J.
(1932). The State Executive Committee of the Democratic Party adopted a rule that only "white democrats" could participate in the party's primary elections. Pursuant to that rule, Mr. Nixon was again refused a primary ballot and again persuaded this Court that the authors of the discriminatory rule should be "classified as representatives of the State to such an extent and in such a sense that the great restraints of the Constitution set limits to their action." Id., at 89.
The decision in Nixon v. Condon relied on the fact that a state statute authorized the Party's Executive Committee to determine the qualifications of voters. Thereafter the Party implemented the same discriminatory policy without statutory authorization by adopting a resolution at a state convention restricting party membership to "white persons." When it first confronted the issue, the Court held that implementation of that rule was not state action. Grovey v. Townsend, 295 U. S. 45 (1935). A few years later, however, Grovey was overruled and the Court decided that the resolution adopted by the party's state convention constituted state action violative of the Fifteenth Amendment even though it was not expressly authorized by statute. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649 (1944). We wrote:
"The United States is a constitutional democracy. Its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials without restriction by any State because of race. This grant to the people of the opportunity for choice is not to be nullified by a State through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election. Constitutional rights would be of little value if they could be thus indirectly denied. Lane v. Wilson, 307 U. S. 268, 275 [(1939)]." Id., at 664.
The same policy of excluding all nonwhite voters from the electoral process was thereafter implemented in certain
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