Leser v. Garnett

Leser v. Garnett
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 23–24, 1922 Decided February 27, 1922
Full case name	Oscar Leser, et al. v. Garnett et al.
Citations	258 U.S. 130 (more) 42 S. Ct. 217; 66 L. Ed. 505; 1922 U.S. LEXIS 2250
Prior history	Error and certiorari to the Court of Appeals of the State of Maryland
Holding
The Nineteenth Amendment was constitutionally established.
Court membership
Chief Justice William H. Taft Associate Justices Joseph McKenna · Oliver W. Holmes, Jr. William R. Day · Willis Van Devanter Mahlon Pitney · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · George Sutherland
Case opinions
Majority	Brandeis, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Art. V

Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had been constitutionally established.

Prior history

On August 26, 1920, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. The amendment provided that "Section 1: 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." "Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

Case

The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide "Whether the Nineteenth Amendment has become part of the federal Constitution." The plaintiffs disputed the constitutionality of the amendment through three claims:

• The power to amend the Constitution did not cover this amendment, due to its character.
• Several states that had ratified the amendment had constitutions that prohibited women from voting, rendering them unable to ratify an amendment to the contrary.
• The ratifications of Tennessee and West Virginia were invalid, because they were adopted without following the rules of legislative procedure in place in those states.

In a unanimous decision, the court addressed each objection in turn.

In response to the first objection, the court declared that since the Fifteenth Amendment had been accepted as valid for more than fifty years, and dealt with a similar matter (in this case, that voting rights could not be denied on account of race), it could not be argued that the new amendment was invalid due to its subject matter.

In response to the second objection, the court decided that when the state legislatures ratified the amendment, they were operating in a federal capacity as laid down in the Constitution, a role which "transcends any limitations sought to be imposed by the people of a state."

As far as the ratifications of Tennessee and West Virginia were concerned, the court remarked that the additional ratifications of Connecticut and Vermont after the proclamation of the amendment rendered the point moot, but the court also addressed the substance of the objection. The court found that as the Secretary of State had accepted the ratifications by the legislatures of the two states as valid, they were valid, effectively ruling the matter as non-justiciable.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 258