grandfather clauses
Old rules preserved
Grandfather clauses are provisions that exempt existing people or things from new rules or requirements.
Someone grandfathered in under old regulations doesn't have to comply with new ones: The building code changed, but older structures were grandfathered in.
The term originates from post-Civil War laws designed to let white voters bypass literacy tests if their grandfathers could vote—effectively excluding Black citizens.
That racist origin is largely forgotten in contemporary use, where grandfather clauses simply mean exemptions based on prior status.
- exceptionDeviation from standard
- legal loopholeExploitable gap in law
- voteFormal choice expression
- exclusionBeing barred from participation
- waiverFormal surrender of rights
discrimination · literacy tests · Jim Crow laws · provision · vested interests · statute · voter suppression · laws · grandfathering · disenfranchisement · Voting Rights Act · suffrage · policies · legislation · Southern Democrats · poll taxes · equal protection · paper
- lawslaws, statute, ordinance, acts, statutes
- Jim CrowJim Crow laws, separate but equal, segregation laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, whites only
- Tobacco Controlsmoking bans, smoking ban, health warnings, warning labels, cigarette tax
- loopholesexemptions, gray areas, technicalities, workarounds, carve-outs
- voter suppressionvoter suppression, voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, poll tax, poll taxes
- Reconstructionfreedmen, Freedmen's Bureau, Fourteenth Amendment, Fifteenth Amendment, carpetbaggers
grandfather, clause, grandfathers, clauses, father, fathers, fathered, fathering, fatherly