"To make payment of poll taxes a prerequisite of voting is not to deny any privilege or immunity protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Privilege of voting is not derived from the United States, but is conferred by the State and, save as restrained by the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments and other provisions of the Federal Constitution, the State may condition suffrage as it deems appropriate. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 170 et seq. Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651, 664-665. McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 37-38. Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347, 362. The privileges and immunities protected are only those that arise from the Constitution and laws of the United States and not those that spring from other sources. Hamilton v. Regents, 293 U.S. 245, 261.
3. The Nineteenth Amendment, adopted in 1920, declares: "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." It applies to men and women alike and by its own force supersedes inconsistent measures, whether federal or state. Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 135. Its purpose is not to regulate the levy or collection of taxes. The construction for which appellant contends would make the amendment a limitation upon the power to tax. Cf. Minor v. Happersett, supra, 173; Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co., 271 U.S. 170, 173-174. The payment of poll taxes as a prerequisite to voting is a familiar and reasonable regulation long enforced in many States and for more than a century in 284*284 Georgia.[4] That measure reasonably may be deemed essential to that form of levy. Imposition without enforcement would be futile. Power to levy and power to collect are equally necessary. And, by the exaction of payment before registration, the right to vote is neither denied nor abridged on account of sex. It is fanciful to suggest that the Georgia law is a mere disguise under which to deny or abridge the right of men to vote on account of their sex. The challenged enactment is not repugnant to the Nineteenth Amendment."
[Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937)]