Did You Know...

100th Anniversary of Women’s Right to Vote

Since its signing in 1789, the U.S. Constitution has only been amended 27 times, including to ensure the citizenship of “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States.” In the 1874 case Minor  v. Happersett, a Missouri woman claimed that her state’s limitation of suffrage to men violated her rights as a citizen under the 14th Amendment. The Court rejected her argument, holding that voting was not necessarily a “privilege or immunity” of citizenship and that the 14th Amendment did not guarantee women’s suffrage. That guarantee came almost 50 years later with the ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920. George Sutherland, who served as a Justice on the Supreme Court from 1922-1938, championed women’s suffrage as a U.S. Senator from the state of Utah prior to joining the Court.