March 29, 1875: Minor v. Happersett Denies Women the Right to Vote

Virginia Minor

March 29, 1875, 150 years ago: The Supreme Court of the United States issues a ruling in the case of Minor v. Happersett. It states that, while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not, by itself, confer a right to vote; therefore, State laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid.

On October 15, 1872, in St. Louis County, Missouri (outside the City of St. Louis), Virginia Minor, a leader of the women's suffrage movement in Missouri, attempted to register to vote. She was refused, on the grounds that she was a woman. Her husband, Francis Minor, was a lawyer, and, together, they sued the registrar who rejected her application, Reese Happersett.

Happersett is not the villain of the story: He was just doing his job, upholding the law as it then stood. If he had registered Mrs. Minor, they would both have been arrested and put in jail.

The Minors' argument was that the provision of the Constitution of the State of Missouri that guaranteed the right to vote only to male citizens of the State was in violation of the recently-ratified 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship to all people born in the United States, saying that citizenship included voting rights. They did not argue under the grounds of the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to all citizens.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in Happersett's favor, pointing out that the intent of the 14th Amendment was to give the rights of citizenship to former slaves, and had nothing to do with voting rights or gender. The Minors appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But all 9 Justices upheld the Missouri Supreme Court ruling: Chief Justice Morrison Waite (who wrote the official opinion), Nathan Clifford, Noah Swayne, Samuel F. Miller (who should have known better, as the F stood for "Freeman"), David Davis, Stephen J. Field, William Strong, Joseph P. Bradley and Ward Hunt.

In 1876, just 1 year after the case was decided, Reese Happersett died, only 38 years old. I can find no cause, but, medicine being what it was at the time, it could have been any number of things. Virginia Minor lived until 1894, at the age of 70. Her husband, Francis Minor, had died 2 years previously. The last remaining Justice on the Court who had ruled in Minor was Stephen J. Field, who retired in 1897. The last survivor of those Justices was also Field, who lived until 1899.

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing America's female citizens age 21 and up the right to vote, was ratified in 1920, after all the participants had died. In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.