Minor v. Happersett

U.S. Case Law

88 U.S. 162 (1875), denied the constitutional basis for the right of women to vote, thus sustaining the disenfranchisement of women until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. In a unanimous decision, the justices upheld a state's right to bar women from voting, finding that nothing in the Constitution “confer[s] the right of suffrage on anyone” and that citizenship alone is not sufficient cause. A year after the decision suffragist Susan B. Anthony succeeded in getting a proposed constitutional amendment introduced in Congress, but it was defeated that year and every subsequent year until 1920.