Poll taxes imposed financial burdens on many potential voters and were, in many states, used to disenfranchise Black men and women. California had done away with poll taxes in 1946. In 1963 California became the eighth state to ratify the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the US Constitution upon passage of Senate Joint Resolution 1. This amendment forbade poll taxes in federal elections. In 1966, poll taxes for state and local elections were deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court decision in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections.