Equal Justice 'Under'
(ie, subordinate to?) Law"?

Minor v. Happersett

Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874) 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."

Minor, a woman, alleged that the refusal of Happersett, a registrar for the State of Missouri, 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 proscription of male citizen only was not an infringement of Minor's civil rights.

The Supreme Court affirmed and upheld the lower court's ruling on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen. 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 or not under the Fourteenth Amendment but rested solely on the lack of provisions within the Constitution for women's suffrage.

Still true today...

"If we are not represented, we are slaves."

James Otis,
American Patriot
c. 1764

If it's true for women, ....?

"That nervous suffragist who wrote to ask if Mrs. Julia Ward Howe had been separated from her husband is a type of a large class of good people, who might be a little better. What they need to tone up their nerves and strengthen the weak knees . . . is a good dose of pure unadultered principle. They call themselves suffragists; but, with every breath of adverse opinion, their faith wavers. . . . All they need is thorough conviction of the right and the justice, not the expediency of woman suffrage. . . ."

"Suppose you try the methods of the mental science people in this matter? Go into a quiet room, sit down, close your eyes, and repeat to yourself: “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” Say it over and over till the idea is fully assimilated. Then, when some one tells you that a woman out in Colorado sold her vote for a piece of chewing gum, or that some other woman does not darn her husband’s stocking, or that Mary A. Livermore never made a loaf of bread in her life, just shut your eyes, ask yourself “What connection is there between this eternal truth and that petty bit of gossip?” If you have half as much sense as you ought to have, you will be able to answer yourself, “None whatever.”"

"If every woman suffragist in the land were divorced from her husband, still “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” and woman suffrage is right. If every woman suffragist were a poor housekeeper and a neglectful mother, still “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” and woman suffrage is right. If all womanly loveliness were embodied in the remonstrants and all womanly unloveliness in the woman suffragist, still “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” and woman suffrage is right. The eternal principles of truth and justice are to be our guides and not the fleeting circumstances that seem to confute these principles. . . ."

--Lida Calvert Obenchain

Source: The Woman’s Journal (February 29, 1896)