Minor v. Happersett

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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 .

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Minor v. Happersett

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