Legal Sidebari
The Nineteenth Amendment and Women’s
Suffrage Part 5: Supreme Court
Interpretations
January 13, 2023
This Legal Sidebar is the fifth in a six-part series that discusses the Nineteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, which recognized women’s voting rights. Shortly before Election Day 2022, a group of
peopl
e gathered in Rochester, New York, to honor the late social reformer and women’s rights activist,
Susan B. Anthony. About 150 years earlier, Anthony
cast a ballot in the 1872 presidential election. She
was arrested and charged with illegally voting as a woman in violation of federal law. She unsuccessfully
claimed that th
e Fourteenth Amendment gave her the right to vote as a privilege of citizenship. A federal
district court
imposed a fine of $100 on Anthony, but she never paid it. As the nation marks the 150th
anniversary of Anthony’s vote—and the 2020 centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification—
Congress may be interested in the history and impact of the women’s suffrage movement and the
Nineteenth Amendment. Additional information on this topic will be published in t
he Constitution
Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court has not decided many cases interpreting the Nineteenth Amendment. In the only
significant case addressing the Amendment’s effect,
Breedlove v. Suttles, the Court
upheld a Georgia law
that required state residents between the ages of 21 and 60 to pay a poll tax. The law exempted women
who did not register to vote from paying the tax. However, men between 21 and 60 years of age were
required to pay the tax, regardless of whether they registered to vote.
A 28-year-old male who sought to register to vote challenged the law as a violation of the Fourteenth and
Nineteenth Amendments. The Court acknowledged that the Nineteenth Amendment protected men’s
voting rights in addition to women’s. However, the Court determined, without much elaboration, that the
tax did not deny or abridge a man’s right to vote on account of his sex.
Almost three decades later, in
Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, the Supreme Court
overruled
Breedlove, determining that imposing a poll tax on voters in state elections violated the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Court held that conditioning a voter’s participation in state
elections upon payment of a poll tax discriminated against prospective voters based on their wealth.
However, in
Harper, the Court did not revisit
Breedlove’s
Nineteenth Amendment holding.
Congressional Research Service
https://crsreports.congress.gov
LSB10900
CRS Legal Sidebar
Prepared for Members and
Committees of Congress
Congressional Research Service
2
Since
Breedlove, the Supreme Court has occasionally referenced the Nineteenth Amendment when
resolving claims brought under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses.
For example, when striking down Georgia’s county-unit system for tabulating votes in state primary
elections as a violation of t
he Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the Court
suggested that
the Nineteenth Amendment stands for “political equality” and illustrates the concept of “one person, one
vote.”
In a later equal protection case involving the Virginia Military Institute’s “male-only” admission policy,
the Court
traced its application of heightened scrutiny to official actions that deny “rights or opportunities
based on sex,” in part, to the history of sex discrimination that preceded the Nineteenth Amendment’s
recognition of women’s suffrage.
Although the Court has occasionally referenced the Nineteenth Amendment in its opinions, a number of
questions concerning the Amendment’s scope remain unresolved. For example, it is unclear whether a
successful Nineteenth Amendment claim
requires a showing of intentional gender-based discrimination
and how far Congress’s Section 2 enforcement power extends.
Click here to continue to Part 6.
Author Information
Brandon J. Murrill
Legislative Attorney
Disclaimer
This document was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS serves as nonpartisan shared staff
to congressional committees and Members of Congress. It operates solely at the behest of and under the direction of
Congress. Information in a CRS Report should not be relied upon for purposes other than public understanding of
information that has been provided by CRS to Members of Congress in connection with CRS’s institutional role.
CRS Reports, as a work of the United States Government, are not subject to copyright protection in the United
States. Any CRS Report may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without permission from CRS. However,
as a CRS Report may include copyrighted images or material from a third party, you may need to obtain the
permission of the copyright holder if you wish to copy or otherwise use copyrighted material.
LSB10900 · VERSION 1 · NEW