## Facts

- Virginia Minor, a native-born U.S. citizen and Missouri resident over age twenty-one, sought to register to vote in St. Louis, Missouri.
- Reese Happersett, the local registrar, refused to register her because Missouri’s constitution and laws limited suffrage to “male citizens.”
- Minor sued in Missouri state court, arguing that as a U.S. citizen the Fourteenth Amendment entitled her to vote and invalidated Missouri’s sex-based voting restriction.
- The trial court sustained a demurrer and entered judgment for Happersett.
- The Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed, and Minor sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether, after the Fourteenth Amendment, a woman who is a U.S. and state citizen must be treated as a voter despite a state constitution limiting suffrage to men.
2. Whether the right to vote is a “privilege or immunity” of U.S. citizenship protected against state abridgment by the Fourteenth Amendment.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Missouri judgment for Happersett.
- The Court accepted that women are “persons” and can be citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Court held that the Constitution does not itself confer the right of suffrage and that the Fourteenth Amendment did not make all citizens voters.
- Missouri’s limitation of voting to male citizens was held not to violate the federal Constitution.

## Legal Principles

- Citizenship and the elective franchise are distinct; U.S. citizenship does not, by itself, carry a federal constitutional right to vote.
- The Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause protects existing privileges of national citizenship; it does not create new substantive rights such as a general right of suffrage.
- Constitutional structure leaves primary authority over voter qualifications to the states, subject only to specific federal constitutional limits (such as later-enacted amendments addressing particular grounds for denial).

## Conclusion

The Court ruled that women are citizens but that voting is not guaranteed as an incident of national citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment; states may restrict suffrage to male citizens absent an applicable federal constitutional prohibition.


Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162 (1875)