Federal and State Campaigns for Women’s Voting Rights

prev | next

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

During the Reconstruction Era, the women’s suffrage movement pursued its objectives at both the federal and state levels of government. At the federal level, proponents argued before federal courts and Congress that the Fourteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote. In particular, proponents of women’s suffrage theorized that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause prohibited states from denying women’s suffrage.1 This Clause provides that “[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” 2

In the Supreme Court case Minor v. Happersett, a women’s suffrage activist, Virginia Minor, sued a registrar in Missouri who denied her application to vote in the 1872 general election.3 Minor maintained that, as a citizen of the United States and Missouri, she was entitled to the “privilege” of voting.4 She argued that the Missouri Constitution and registry law denying her that privilege violated the Fourteenth Amendment.5

The Supreme Court agreed that Minor was a natural-born citizen of the United States.6 However, the Court determined that the right to vote was not one of the “necessary privileges” of citizenship.7 The Court noted that, at the time of the Constitution’s adoption, none of the states allowed all citizens to vote—an arrangement the Framers implicitly accepted.8 The Court also observed that Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment penalized states that denied the right to vote to “male inhabitants” who were citizens at least twenty-one years of age by reducing their congressional representation.9 This language, in the Court’s view, indicated that suffrage was not an “absolute right of all citizens” under the Constitution.10 Drawing inferences from the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history, the Court concluded that states could deny voting rights to women.11

In addition to pursuing recognition of women’s suffrage in federal court, proponents petitioned Congress for legislation requiring the states to recognize women’s voting rights. For example, in her 1871 petition to the House Judiciary Committee, Victoria Woodhull maintained that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments implicitly recognized such rights.12 Congressional committees rejected Woodhull’s petition and many similar petitions during the 1870s.13 In 1878, Senator Aaron Sargent of California introduced a resolution proposing a suffrage amendment to the Constitution that contained the same prohibition on abridging women’s voting rights as the later-ratified Nineteenth Amendment.14 However, this resolution lacked the political support needed for passage at the time.

Despite setbacks at the federal level, proponents of women’s suffrage achieved some progress at the state level during the Reconstruction Era. A few western state governments accorded women full or partial voting rights. For example, in 1869, the Territory of Wyoming—and, later, the State of Wyoming—granted its female citizens full voting rights.15 Similarly, the Territory of Utah enacted a law granting women the right to vote in 1870.16 Although Congress legislatively deprived Utah women of this right in 1887, the State of Utah’s constitution again recognized women’s suffrage in 1896.17 Michigan granted women limited suffrage, allowing them to vote in school board elections after the Civil War.18

1: See, e.g., Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 165 (1875), superseded by U.S. Const. amend. XIX. In the 1872 presidential election, Susan B. Anthony cast a ballot in Rochester, New York. She was arrested and charged with illegally voting in violation of federal law. She unsuccessfully claimed that the Fourteenth Amendment gave her the right to vote as a privilege of citizenship. A federal district court imposed a fine of $100 on Anthony, but she never paid it. See United States v. Anthony, 24 F. Cas. 829, 830–33 (C.C. N.D.N.Y. 1873); Susan B. Anthony and the Struggle for Suffrage, Nat’l Archives (Aug. 15, 2016), https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/suffrage.html.
2: U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
3: Minor, 88 U.S. at 165.
4: Id.
5: Id.
6: Id. at 165, 170.
7: Id. at 177–78.
8: Id. at 172–73.
9: Id. at 174–75.
10: Id.
11: Id. at 177–78. Since the 1970s, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause has played a role in combating gender discrimination by subjecting gender-based classifications to intermediate scrutiny. See generally Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197 (1976). See also Amdt14.S1.8.8.3 General Approach to Gender Classifications.
12: See H.R. Rep. No. 41-22, at 1 (1871).
13: See id. See also, e.g., Petition for Woman Suffrage, U.S. House of Rep., https://history.house.gov/HouseRecord/Detail/15032436231.
14: See S. Rep. No. 45-523 (1878) (discussing S. Res. 12, 45th Cong., 2d Sess. (1878)).
15: Wyoming and the 19th Amendment, Nat’l Park Serv. (Aug. 22, 2019), https://home.nps.gov/articles/wyoming-women-s-history.htm.
16: Women’s Suffrage in Utah, Nat’l Park Serv. (May 30, 2021), https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/women-s-suffrage-in-utah.htm.
17: Id.
18: Michigan and the 19th Amendment, Nat’l Park Serv. (Aug. 9, 2019), https://www.nps.gov/articles/michigan-and-the-19th-amendment.htm.