Although the Twenty-fourth Amendment abolished poll taxes in federal elections, the Voting Rights Act did not outlaw poll taxes in state or local elections. Instead, Congress stated in the Act that such poll taxes were unconstitutional. When President Johnson signed the Act on Friday, August 6, 1965 he declared that “tomorrow at 1 p.m., the Attorney General has been directed to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the poll tax in the State of Mississippi…I have, in addition, requested the Department of Justice to work all through this weekend so that… next Tuesday, additional poll tax suits will be filed in the States of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia.” The following year the US Supreme Court struck down the use of poll taxes in state and local elections in the case Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections.