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.
The Nineteenth Amendment prohibits the federal and state governments from denying or abridging a U.S. citizen’s right to vote on the basis of sex, thereby recognizing women’s suffrage.1 Section 2 of the Amendment grants Congress the power to enforce the prohibitions in Section 1 by enacting “appropriate legislation.” 2 The Supreme Court has not decided many cases interpreting the Nineteenth Amendment.3 Nonetheless, the Amendment has had a significant impact throughout society by helping to increase women’s participation in politics and other domains of public life.4
As proposed and ratified by men in the late 1780s, the Constitution did not prohibit the states from establishing gender-based restrictions on voting.5 From the Founding of the United States in 1776 to the end of the Civil War in 1865, none of the states consistently recognized a woman’s right to vote in federal or state elections.6 Nonetheless, in the decades prior to the Civil War, women gained significant experience in organizing and leading political reform movements, including women’s suffrage campaigns.7
After the Civil War, the states’ ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution that aimed to protect African-Americans’ civil rights brought new attention to issues of women’s rights and suffrage.8 During the Reconstruction Era, the women’s suffrage movement unsuccessfully sought federal recognition of women’s voting rights by petitioning Congress and pursuing litigation in federal court.9 Despite slow progress at the federal level in the late nineteenth century, state-level campaigns succeeded in obtaining full women’s voting rights in eleven western states, and partial voting rights in many others, by 1916.10
By the late 1910s, as a result of women’s suffrage campaigns and shifting views of traditional gender roles during World War I, the political environment became more favorable for the enactment of a women’s suffrage amendment.11 Congress proposed the Nineteenth Amendment in June 1919, and the states ratified it in August 1920.12
-
Footnotes
- 1
- U.S. Const. amend. XIX, § 1.
- 2
- Id. § 2. The Supreme Court has held that, because the Nineteenth Amendment is self-executing, its prohibitions became effective upon ratification without the need for further government action. Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277, 283 (1937), overruled in part by Harper v. Va. Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 668–669 (1966).
- 3
- See Amdt19.3 The Scope of the Nineteenth Amendment.
- 4
- See Amdt19.4 Impact of the Nineteenth Amendment Beyond the Supreme Court.
- 5
- See Amdt19.2.1 Women’s Suffrage from the Founding Era to the Civil War.
- 6
- See id.
- 7
- See id.
- 8
- See Amdt19.2.2 The Reconstruction Amendments and Women’s Suffrage.
- 9
- See id.
- 10
- See Amdt19.2.4 Women’s Suffrage and the Progressive Era.
- 11
- See id.
- 12
- See Amdt19.2.5 Proposal and Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.