## Facts

- Genevieve Welosky was prosecuted in Massachusetts Superior Criminal Court (Suffolk County) for keeping intoxicating liquor for sale.
- Before the jury was impaneled, Welosky filed a challenge to the array, asserting the jury lists unlawfully excluded women.
- She argued (1) after the Nineteenth Amendment, Massachusetts jury statutes should be read to include women, and (2) exclusion of women from jury lists and her jury violated due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The trial judge denied the challenge; an all-male jury was empaneled and convicted her.
- Welosky sought appellate review by exceptions, contesting the denial of her challenge and raising federal constitutional claims.

## Issues

1. Whether Massachusetts jury statutes then in force required that women otherwise qualified be included on jury lists.
2. Whether excluding women from the jury pool and jury violated the defendant’s Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court overruled the defendant’s exceptions and affirmed the conviction.
- The court held Massachusetts statutes did not require inclusion of women on jury lists.
- The court held that excluding women from the jury pool did not violate the defendant’s Fourteenth Amendment rights.
- The court noted that prior advisory opinions are not binding adjudications, but reached the same result after full adversarial briefing.

## Legal Principles

- Massachusetts jury eligibility and list-compilation requirements are determined by state statute; absent legislative change, courts will not treat women’s suffrage as an implied amendment to jury statutes.
- The Nineteenth Amendment secures the right to vote without sex discrimination but does not itself create a federal requirement that women be eligible for jury service.
- A jury drawn in conformity with valid state jury statutes is not rendered unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment solely because women are excluded from jury lists.

## Conclusion

The court held that Massachusetts law at the time did not require women to be placed on jury lists and that an all-male jury selected under existing statutes did not violate the defendant’s Fourteenth Amendment rights, so the conviction was affirmed.


Commonwealth v. Welosky, 276 Mass. 398, 177 N.E. 656 (1931)