[{"command":"add_css","data":[{"rel":"stylesheet","media":"all","href":"\/sites\/default\/files\/css\/css_veuEhhb1658wti0_ZAig66JOyixENU-N9zhjLQSLfOQ.css?delta=0\u0026language=en\u0026theme=heritage_theme\u0026include=eJwrTi1LzdNPzkksLq7Uy8tPSQUAPMsGtA"}]},{"command":"invoke","selector":null,"method":"openEssay","args":["10000180","\n\n\u003Carticle about=\u0022\/constitution\/amendments\/19\/essays\/181\/suffrage-sex\u0022 class=\u0022node node--type-constitution-essay node--promoted node--view-mode-embedded clearfix\u0022\u003E\n  \u003Ch1 class=\u0022title\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan\u003ESuffrage\u2014Sex\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003C\/h1\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-location\u0022\u003E\n      Amendment XIX\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-context\u0022\u003E\n      \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe 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.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ECongress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-body\u0022\u003E\n    \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EContrary to popular belief, the United States Constitution of 1789 is a gender-neutral document. Throughout the original text, the Framers referred to \u201cpersons\u201d\u2014as opposed to \u201cmale persons\u201d\u2014and used the pronoun \u201che\u201d only in the generic sense. The word \u201cmale\u201d did not even appear in the Constitution until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ENothing in the original Constitution bars women from voting. Instead, the Framers left the matter of determining who was eligible to participate in the election of House members and presidential electors almost entirely to the discretion of the states. Article I, Section 2, minimally requires that each state\u2019s congressional electors \u201cshall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature,\u201d and Article II, Section 1 simply directs each state legislature to appoint its presidential electors in whatever manner it chooses. Although it is true that almost every state opted to restrict the vote to men, New Jersey did not. Accordingly, between the late 1780s and 1807, when that state\u2019s legislature restricted the vote to men, many women participated in federal elections. Under the Constitution, in short, no change was needed to enable women to vote. This fact was ultimately reflected in the different strategies used by the advocates of woman suffrage to remove sexual qualifications for voting.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EAlthough scholars typically trace the origins of the organized woman\u2019s rights movement generally, and the drive for woman suffrage particularly, to a famous 1848 gathering in Seneca Falls, New York, the woman suffrage movement began to affect policy only during Reconstruction. In this period, the advocates of woman suffrage began pursuing three main strategies. The first was a judicial strategy involving the Fourteenth Amendment. From the standpoint of the woman suffrage movement, the Fourteenth Amendment represented both a setback and an opportunity. It was a setback insofar as its second section introduced the word \u201cmale\u201d into the Constitution and did so in a clause penalizing any state that abridged the right of its \u201cmale inhabitants\u201d to vote in state or federal elections for reasons other than crime or rebellion. In so doing, woman suffrage advocates worried, the second section lent credibility to the idea that the Constitution restricted the right to vote to men. Nevertheless, they also viewed the amendment as an opportunity, because they believed the first section of the amendment contradicted the implication of the second. When the Citizenship Clause was read in combination with the Privileges or Immunities Clause, they argued, the Fourteenth Amendment barred states from denying a woman\u2019s right to vote in federal elections. In its 1874 decision of \u003Cem\u003EMinor v. Happersett\u003C\/em\u003E, however, the Supreme Court unequivocally disagreed, holding that voting was not one of the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EAt the same time, various elements of the woman suffrage movement began pursuing other strategies. Consistent with the Framers\u2019 arrangements in Articles I and II, the first such strategy involved persuading individual states and territories to eliminate sexual qualifications for voting. In 1869, the Wyoming territory became the first territorial government to do so. Upon obtaining statehood in 1890, Wyoming became the first state since New Jersey to allow women to participate in federal elections on an equal basis with men. Although success was often slow in coming, by the time the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, thirty states and one territory already permitted women to vote in at least some aspect in the selection of members of the House (and by then the Senate) or presidential electors.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe other strategy begun in this period involved amending the federal Constitution in a way that would render such state action unnecessary. More precisely, the advocates of woman suffrage sought to reduce the power conferred upon the states in Article I, Section 2; Article II, Section 1; and eventually in the Seventeenth Amendment (which was ratified in 1913)\u2014as well as by their own constitutions\u2014by explicitly barring the states from making sex a qualification for voting in federal and state elections. The first such amendment was introduced in Congress in 1869. In 1878, California Senator Aaron A. Sargent introduced the proposal that would, without any change in wording, be approved by Congress in 1919 and ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1920. Sargent\u2019s proposal simply repeated the language of the Fifteenth Amendment save for one change: whereas the Fifteenth Amendment forbids both the U.S. and state governments from denying or abridging their citizens\u2019 right to vote \u201con account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,\u201d the Nineteenth forbids the same \u201con account of sex.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EUnlike so many other clauses of the Constitution\u2014including the Fifteenth Amendment itself\u2014the Nineteenth Amendment has generated a remarkably small body of case law. In the first decade or so following ratification, a relatively small number of state courts implemented its restriction on the power of the states by striking down constitutional or statutory provisions that restricted the vote to men, made it more difficult for women than men to qualify, or otherwise treated male and female ballots differently. The amendment has generated even fewer federal cases. Although the Court has obliquely commented on the meaning of the amendment in various cases, it has confronted this question squarely on only one occasion. In \u003Cem\u003EBreedlove v. Suttles\u003C\/em\u003E (1937), a Georgia law exempted payment of a one-dollar poll tax for unregistered female voters, but required male voters to pay the tax before registering to vote. In its decision, the Court stated that the amendment\u2019s restriction on the power of the federal and state governments to deny or abridge their citizens\u2019 right to vote \u201con account of sex\u201d applied to men and women equally, and superseded all federal or state measures to the contrary. The Court concluded, however, that the amendment was not designed to restrict the state\u2019s ability to tax.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--media\u0022\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--info\u0022\u003E\n              \u003Ch4 class=\u0022con-essay-author--name\u0022\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.udallas.edu\/academics\/undergrad\/academics\/majors\/politics\/politicsfaculty\/tiffanyjmiller\u0022\u003ETiffany J. Miller\u003C\/a\u003E\n                  \u003C\/h4\u003E\n                  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--job\u0022\u003E\n         Associate Professor, University of Dallas\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-tabs\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cul data-tabs class=\u0022tabs\u0022\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000180-taba\u0022\u003EFurther Reading\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000180-tabb\u0022\u003ECase Law\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000180-tabc\u0022\u003ERelated Essays\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n      \u003C\/ul\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv data-tabs-content\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000180-taba\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEleanor Flexner \u0026amp; Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman\u0027s Rights Movement in the United States (1996)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJudith Apter Klinghoffer \u0026amp; Lois Elkis, \u201cThe Petticoat Electors\u201d: Women\u2019s Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776\u2013 1807, 12 J. Early Rep. 159 (1992)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EONE WOMAN, ONE VOTE: REDISCOVERING THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT (Marjorie Spruill Wheeler ed., 1995)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThomas G. West, Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class and Justice in the Origins of America (1997)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000180-tabb\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMinor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELeser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBreedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000180-tabc\u0022\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000003\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EElector Qualifications\u003C\/a\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000078\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EPresidential Electors\u003C\/a\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000177\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EPopular Election of Senators\u003C\/a\u003E\n                  \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n\u003C\/article\u003E\n"]}]