Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. (88 U.S.) 162 (1875), argued 9 Feb. 1875, decided 9 Mar. 1875 by vote of 9 to 0; Waite for the Court. The Supreme Court held that a state could constitutionally forbid a woman citizen to vote, despite her invocation of the citizenship and privileges and immunities clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Guarantee Clause (Art. IV, sec. 4); the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the prohibition against bills of attainder (Art. I, sec. 9). Noticeably absent from this list, to a modern eye, are the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.49

The case is important as near‐contemporary interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's original intent. It is notable for its narrow definition of citizenship “as conveying the idea of membership of a nation, nothing more” (p. 166) and for its firm, unanimous rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment as a source either of a substantive federal suffrage right or of a federal limit on state control of the franchise. Otherwise, neither section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment nor, later, the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty‐Fourth, and Twenty‐Sixth Amendments would have been necessary. “Certainly,” the Court declared, “if the courts can consider any question settled, it is this one. … The Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not necessarily confer the right of suffrage” (p. 177). This interpretation was substantially, albeit tacitly, abandoned in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) and Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966).2

See also Gender; Vote, Right to.

Ward E.Y. Elliott

MINOR V. HAPPERSETT

MINOR V. HAPPERSETT, 21 Wallace 162 (1875). The Fourteenth Amendment provides in part that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." When Virginia L. Minor of Missouri was rebuffed in 1866 in her attempt to register as a voter, she maintained that the right of suffrage was a privilege of U.S. citizenship. In rejecting this contention, the Supreme Court held that the right of suffrage was not coextensive with citizenship—that the Fourteenth Amendment did not add to the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, but merely furnished an additional guarantee for those in existence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kerber, Linda K. No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.

Rogers, Donald W., and Christine Scriabine, eds. Voting and the Spirit of American Democracy: Essays on the History of Voting Rights in America. West Hartford, Conn.: University of Hartford, 1990; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Thomas S.Barclay/a. r.

See alsoCivil Rights and Liberties ; Suffrage: Exclusion from the Suffrage ; Suffrage: Woman's Suffrage ; Voting ; Women's Rights Movement: The Nineteenth Century .