Minor v. Happersett

Minor v. Happersett
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 9, 1875 Decided March 29, 1875
Full case name	Virginia Minor v. Reese Happersett
Citations	88 U.S. 162 (more) 22 L. Ed. 627; 1874 U.S. LEXIS 1354; 21 Wall. 162
Prior history	Error to the Supreme Court of Missouri
Holding
The Court held that voting is not a privilege of citizenship.
Court membership
Chief Justice Morrison Waite Associate Justices Nathan Clifford · Noah H. Swayne Samuel F. Miller · David Davis Stephen J. Field · William Strong Joseph P. Bradley · Ward Hunt
Case opinions
Majority	Waite, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV
Overruled by
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (in part)

Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875), was a United States Supreme Court case appealed from the Supreme Court of Missouri concerning the Missouri law that said, "Every male citizen of the United States shall be entitled to vote."

Virginia Minor, a leader of the women's suffrage movement in Missouri, alleged that the refusal of Reese Happersett, a Missouri state registrar, to allow her to register to vote was an infringement of her civil rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Decision

The Supreme Court of the United States, on appeal from The Supreme Court of Missouri, upheld the Missouri voting legislation, saying that the limitation of suffrage to male citizens was not an infringement of Minor's rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinion first asked whether Minor was a citizen of the United States, and answered that she was, citing both the Fourteenth Amendment and earlier common law. It then asked whether the right to vote was one of the "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" at the time of that Amendment's adoption in 1868. Citing a variety of historical sources, it found that it was not.

The court reasoned that the Constitution of the United States did not explicitly give citizens an affirmative right to vote and that throughout the history of the nation from the adoption of the Constitution, a wide variety of persons, including women, were recognized as citizens but denied the right to vote. For example, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, none of the original Thirteen Colonies gave all citizens the right to vote, all attaching restrictions based on factors such as sex, race, age, and ownership of land. The opinion continues that "it cannot for a moment be doubted that if it had been intended to make all citizens of the United States voters, the framers of the Constitution would not have left it to implication. So important a change in the condition of citizenship as it actually existed, if intended, would have been expressly declared."

The court's decision had nothing to do with whether women were considered persons under the Fourteenth Amendment; the court ruled that they were clearly persons and citizens. The decision rested solely on the lack of provisions within the Constitution for women's suffrage.

Subsequent history

Minor has never been overruled by another Supreme Court decision. In fact, Minor is still cited for the proposition that the Constitution does not confer the right to vote. However, so far as the decision relates to women's suffrage, it is no longer applicable because of the Nineteenth Amendment.

See also

• Nineteenth Amendment – Provided that female citizens of the United States not be denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.
• Women's Suffrage
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 88

Further reading

• Basch, Norma (1992). "Reconstructing Female Citizenship: Minor v. Happersett". In Nieman, Donald G. (ed.). The Constitution, Law, and American Life: Critical Aspects of the Nineteenth-Century Experience. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. pp. 52–66. ISBN 978-0-8203-1403-7. 
• Cushman, Clare (2001). Supreme Court Decisions and Women's Rights: Milestone to Equality. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-1-56802-614-5. 
• Ray, Angela G.; Richards, Cindy Koenig (2007). "Inventing Citizens, Imagining Gender Justice: The Suffrage Rhetoric of Virginia and Francis Minor". Quarterly Journal of Speech 93 (4): 375–402. doi:10.1080/00335630701449340. 

External links

• Works related to Minor v. Happersett at Wikisource
• Text of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) is available from: Justia · Findlaw