Proposal and Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment

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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 language that would become the Nineteenth Amendment was first introduced in Congress during the Reconstruction Era. In 1878, Senator Aaron Sargent of California introduced a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution that would have prohibited the federal and state governments from restricting U.S. citizens’ voting rights “on account of sex.” 1 This language was modeled after the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on race-based voting restrictions.2 The Senate did not act on Senator Sargent’s proposal at the time; however, it later voted down the proposed women’s suffrage amendment, as reintroduced, in 1887.3

After decades of slow progress at the federal level, the women’s suffrage amendment attained a critical level of political support in the late 1910s.4 In December 1917, Representative John E. Raker of California reintroduced the joint resolution proposing a women’s suffrage amendment in the Sixty-Fifth Congress.5 During the House of Representative’s debate on the resolution, proponents argued that women should have the right to vote because they had played a key role in the nation’s labor force during World War I.6 Moreover, U.S. allies, including Great Britain, had already granted suffrage to many women.7 At least one congressman argued that the extension of the franchise to women would recognize their increasing social and economic independence from their husbands.8 Proponents also noted that many women paid taxes without having a role in choosing their political representatives.9

In general, opponents argued that amending the Constitution to recognize women’s suffrage would intrude on each state’s authority to determine the composition of its electorate10 and disrupt the traditional notion of the American family.11 A few congressmen objected because the Nineteenth Amendment would, at least on paper, enfranchise African-American women.12 Despite some opposition, the joint resolution narrowly achieved the two-thirds majority needed for passage in the House on January 10, 1918.13

The Senate debated the joint resolution for several months in 1918. Senate debates touched on many of the same issues as the House debates, including women’s contribution to the war effort, states’ rights, and race.14 In September 1918, shortly before the midterm elections, President Woodrow Wilson gave a speech to the Senate in support of the women’s suffrage amendment.15 President Wilson noted that women supported the nation’s fight in World War I and contended that the United States could not fight for democracy abroad while denying women the right to vote at home.16 In addition to arguing that women’s suffrage was key to winning the war, Wilson stated that the resolution of the nation’s “great problems” after the war would “depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our counsels.” 17 The day after Wilson’s speech, on October 1, 1918, the Senate rejected the joint resolution proposing the women’s suffrage amendment.18 The amendment again failed in the Senate during the Sixty-Fifth Congress on February 10, 1919.19

In May 1919, after the new Sixty-Sixth Congress convened, President Wilson called a special session of the national legislature to consider a number of issues, including the women’s suffrage amendment.20 Progress in Congress was swift. The House passed the joint resolution proposing the Nineteenth Amendment on May 21, 1919,21 and the Senate approved it on June 4, 1919.22 Thereafter, it was sent to the states for ratification.23 Although the new Congress acted quickly on the Amendment, more than a year elapsed before it attained the three-fourths majority of the states necessary for ratification on August 18, 1920.24 About a week later, on August 26, U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the Amendment to have been ratified.25

Despite the Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification, many African-American women and other female minority groups throughout the United States continued to face significant obstacles to voting, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. These barriers were addressed when the states ratified the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in 1964.26 Congress then enacted the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment.27

1: See S. Rep. No. 45-523 (1878) (discussing S. Res. 12, 45th Cong., 2d Sess. (1878)). An earlier suffrage amendment, introduced in 1868 by Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas, would have granted suffrage on the basis of citizenship. S.J. Res. 180, 40th Cong., 3rd Sess. (1868) ( “The basis of suffrage in the United States shall be that of citizenship, and all native or naturalized citizens shall enjoy the same rights and privileges of the elective franchise . . . .” ). This bill was never acted upon. See Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3rd Sess. 38 (1868). Another early suffrage amendment, introduced by Representative George W. Julian of Indiana, would have provided that suffrage “shall be based on citizenship, and shall be regulated by Congress,” and all U.S. citizens “shall enjoy this right equally, without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex.” H.R.J. Res. 15, 41st Cong., 1st Sess. (1869).
2: Compare S. Res. 12, 45th Cong., 2d Sess. (1878), with U.S. Const. amend. XV.
3: 18 Cong. Rec. 1002–03 (1887). During the late 1800s, several House and Senate committee reports recommended the passage of joint resolutions proposing a women’s suffrage amendment. For example, in 1882, the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage reported a suffrage amendment favorably, stating that “to deny to one-half of the citizens of the republic all participation in framing the laws by which they are to be governed, simply on account of their sex, is political despotism to those who are excluded, and ‘taxation without representation’ to such of them as have property liable to taxation.” S. Rep. No. 47-686, at 1–6 (1882).
4: Eleanor Flexner & Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States 275–76 (1996). See also Amdt19.2.4 Women’s Suffrage and the Progressive Era.
5: H.R.J. Res. 200, 65th Cong., 2d Sess. (1917).
6: E.g., 56 Cong. Rec. 765 (1918).
7: E.g., id.
8: Id. at 788.
9: See id. at 765.
10: Id. at 764.
11: Id. at 785.
12: Id. at 766.
13: Id. at 810.
14: See, e.g., id. at 10977–81.
15: Id. at 10928–29.
16: Id.
17: Id.
18: Id. at 10987–88. The joint resolution failed to attain the two-thirds majority required to propose an amendment to the Constitution.Id.
19: 57 Cong. Rec. 3062 (1919).
20: Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 4, at 307.
21: 58 Cong. Rec. 93–94 (1919).
22: Id. at 635.
23: See Joint Resolution Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution Extending the Right of Suffrage to Women, H.R.J. Res. 1, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., 41 Stat. 362 (1919).
24: The Amendment became law when Tennessee ratified it. Tennessee and the Nineteenth Amendment, Nat’l Park Serv. (July 31, 2020), https://www.nps.gov/articles/tennessee-women-s-history.htm.
25: Amendment to the Constitution, 1920, 41 Stat. 1823 (1920).
26: The Twenty-Fourth Amendment prohibits the federal and state governments from conditioning a U.S. citizen’s right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or “other tax.” See Amdt24.1 Overview of Twenty-Fourth Amendment, Abolition of Poll Tax.
27: 52 U.S.C. §§ 10101–10702. See also Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote, Nat’l Archives, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/19th-amendment.