Minor V. Happersett - Background

Background

Virginia Minor, a leader of the women's suffrage movement in Missouri, attempted to register to vote on October 15, 1872, in St. Louis County, Missouri, but was refused on the grounds that she was a woman. With the assistance of her husband, Francis Minor (a lawyer), she brought an action in state courts against Reese Happersett, the registrar who had rejected her application to register to vote, alleging that the provisions of the Missouri state constitution which allowed only men to vote were in violation of the United States Constitution, and specifically the Fourteenth Amendment. The key to the Minors' argument was that citizenship entailed voting rights—an assertion with enough rhetoric on both sides to make it an open question.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in favor of the registrar and against Minor. The state court observed that the "almost universal practice of all of the States ... from the adoption of the Constitution to the present time" was to restrict voting rights to men only; and, additionally, that the clear intent of the Fourteenth Amendment was to give the rights of citizenship to the former slaves, and not to force other changes in state laws. The court noted, in particular, that the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment (penalizing states which denied the right to vote to any of its citizens) referred specifically to male citizens, and concluded that "this clearly recognizes the right, and seems to anticipate the exercise of the right, on the part of the States to restrict the right of suffrage to the male inhabitants."

Minor appealed the Missouri ruling to the United States Supreme Court, presenting the same arguments before the Supreme Court as had been unsuccessfully put forth before the state court, and additionally proposing that women's suffrage was consistent with the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. The Supreme Court observed that the sole point at issue was whether the Constitution entitled women to vote despite state laws limiting this right to men only. The state of Missouri did not send counsel to defend its decision before the Supreme Court, choosing instead to justify its decision in a three-sentence demurrer.