Constitution

The Nineteenth Amendment: Women's Right to Vote

The Nineteenth Amendment prohibits the United States and the states from denying or abridging the right to vote on account of sex.

4Conservative Editors · Published November 8, 2026

The text

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919. Ratified August 18, 1920.

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 English

The command. "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."

Enforcement. Congress has power to enforce the Amendment by appropriate legislation.

The text follows the model of the Fifteenth Amendment, replacing "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" with "sex." Like the Fifteenth, it does not grant a general right to vote; it prohibits one ground of exclusion.

At ratification in 1920, several states, mostly in the West, already allowed women to vote, beginning with Wyoming Territory in 1869. The Amendment made the rule national and extended the franchise to millions of women in the rest of the country.

The Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, when Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to approve it, after a narrow vote in its legislature.

What the Founders said

The movement for women's suffrage began formally at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Its declaration paraphrased the Declaration of Independence, "all men and women are created equal."

The Constitution's original text left the franchise to the states, and a few, such as New Jersey, had briefly allowed some women to vote after the Revolution. Abigail Adams's 1776 letter to John Adams asking him to "remember the ladies" is the most famous Founding-era statement on the subject, though it was a private request.

Susan B. Anthony proposed the text in 1878 in Congress, and it was reintroduced for decades before passing in 1919. The campaign combined state-by-state efforts, with federal pressure, and used the same Article V process that created the Reconstruction Amendments.

How the courts have read it

  • Minor v. Happersett (1875): the Constitution did not confer the right to vote on women; this ruling was superseded by the Amendment.
  • Leser v. Garnett (1922): the Nineteenth Amendment was validly ratified and not defeated by objections that some states' rules forbade their legislatures from ratifying it.
  • Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923): the Court struck down a minimum wage law for women, citing the Nineteenth Amendment as evidence that women's legal status had changed; the case was overruled in 1937 by West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish.

There has been little litigation under the Amendment, since the rule against sex-based voting restrictions has been uncontroversial.

Why it matters now

The Nineteenth Amendment is among the most widely accepted of the amendments, and it is one that conservatives can claim with pride. It was the product of decades of organizing by citizens, of state-level experiments in the western states, and of an amendment process that put the decision to the states.

The Amendment also illustrates the principle of legitimate constitutional change. Women's suffrage did not come from judicial reinterpretation; the Supreme Court had rejected the argument in Minor v. Happersett. It came from the people adopting an amendment.

It carried consequences that continue to shape American politics, from the gender composition of the electorate to the shape of party coalitions. Whatever one's views of them, they came about through the process the Constitution prescribes, which is the most durable foundation for any change in the basic law.

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