The Nineteenth Amendment
Sex and voting rights
Prohibits denying the vote because of sex, ending a seventy-year campaign for women’s suffrage.
Ratified 1920 · 3 minute read
Published by Quasi-Legal Institute · Report an error
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
In plain language
No denial because of sex
Neither the federal government nor any state can keep someone from voting because they are a woman. The language is nearly identical to the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on race discrimination.
How the campaign unfolded
The organized push for women’s suffrage began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Wyoming Territory gave women the vote in 1869, and over the next fifty years a number of states followed. Activists worked state by state and also pressed for a national amendment.
Congress passed the amendment in June 1919. It was ratified in August 1920 when Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to approve it, which was the number needed.
Who still faced barriers
The amendment did not end every barrier. Many Black women in the South were kept from voting by poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Native Americans were not made citizens by federal law until 1924, and some states did not let them vote until the late 1940s. Many Asian immigrants could not become citizens, and therefore could not vote, until federal laws changed between 1943 and 1952.
Before and after in court
In Minor v. Happersett (1875), the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give women the right to vote, which is why a separate amendment was needed. After ratification, the Court rejected a challenge to the amendment’s validity in Leser v. Garnett (1922).