Minor v. Happersett

In a decision issued in 1875, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett against Virginia Minor, a Missouri suffragist and leader in the National Woman Suffrage Association. Minor had sued a St. Louis registrar, Reese Happersett, after he refused to allow her to register to vote, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the privileges of citizenship included the right to vote.

The Court unanimously rejected this argument, holding that citizenship did not automatically confer the right to vote and that the Constitution left the regulation of suffrage to the states. The ruling closed off the strategy of winning women's suffrage through the courts and the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result, suffragists turned increasingly toward a state-by-state campaign and the long effort to secure a constitutional amendment, achieved in 1920 with the Nineteenth Amendment.