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 which ordained "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 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 United States Supreme Court affirmed and upheld the lower court's ruling on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the privileges or immunities of a citizen and that, historically, "citizen" and "eligible voter" have not been synonymous. Since the United States Constitution did not provide suffrage for women, the Fourteenth Amendment did not confer that right. 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. It rested solely on the lack of provisions within the Constitution for women's suffrage.

The Court referenced the natural-born-citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution, stating, "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words 'all children' are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as 'all persons,' and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea."

The decision was that a woman, born of citizen parents within the Unitied States, was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.^[1]

Subsequent history

Minor has not been explicitly 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, as the decision relates to women's suffrage in particular, it is no longer applicable because of the Nineteenth Amendment.

See also

• Nineteenth Amendment – Provided female citizens of the United States the right to vote.
• 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 082031403X. 
• Cushman, Clare (2001). Supreme Court Decisions and Women's Rights: Milestone to Equality. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly. pp. 7–8. ISBN 1568026145. 
• 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

References

1. ^ Citizenship of the United States, Frederick Van Dyne LL.M, 1904, The Lawyers' Cooperative Publishing Co., p.13