Minor v. Happersett
88 U.S. 162 Supreme Court 1875
Virginia Minor was an officer in the National Woman Suffrage Association, which made a uniform attempt to challenge voting restrictions in various states across the country in 1872.
After being barred from voting in 1872, she and her husband Francis sued the Missouri voting registrar arguing "It is impossible that this can be a republican government, in which one-half the citizens thereof are forever disenfranchised."
The Supreme Court upheld the discriminatory law, stating "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." A bust of Virginia Minor was placed in the State Capitol Building in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2013, the same state that refused her right to vote in 1875.
Back to topto confine the right of suffrage
to men
is to doubt
that women are persons, and
declare that
the words
the Constitution
used to form the nation,
"the people of the United States,"
were a name
for
men
“The question is presented in this case, whether, since the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, a woman, who is a citizen of the United States and of the State of Missouri, is a voter in that State, notwithstanding the provision of the constitution and laws of the State, which confine the right...”