grandfather clause

plural grandfather clauses

1. A clause or section, especially in a law, granting exceptions for people or organisations who were affected by previous conditions.

   Many building codes include a grandfather clause exempting older buildings until some amount of remodeling occurs.

   5 more examples

   The “grandfather clause” provides that no man whose grandfather could not vote, can exercise the right of franchise. It will thus disenfranchise many negroes, whose grandfathers were slaves.

   1910 October 27, “Grandfather's Clause”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Under the Fifteenth Amendment there is little political legislation, except the effort in Southern States by educational or property qualifications, and most questionably by the so-called "grandfather clause," to exclude most negroes from the right of suffrage.

   1911, Frederic Jesup Stimson, chapter XVI, in Popular Law-making

   The compromise that was finally struck will eliminate the minimum benefit for future retirees. But a “grandfather” clause allows the three million pensioners already receiving it to keep on getting it.

   1981 December 17, “Santa Claus? No, Grandfather Clause”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   A grandfather clause will allow senior members retiring this year to transfer these funds to their personal bank accounts.

   1992 January 18, “Undeserving 'Grandfathers'”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   In 1915, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Guinn v. United States that grandfather clauses were unconstitutional. The court in those days upheld any number of segregationist laws — and even in Guinn specified that literacy tests untethered from grandfather clauses were OK.

   2013 October 22, Alan Greenblatt, “The Racial History Of The 'Grandfather Clause'”, in NPR.org