## Facts

- A female U.S. citizen residing in Cook County, Illinois, was a qualified elector and legal voter after state law granted women full suffrage following the Nineteenth Amendment.
- Cook County jury commissioners prepared the county jury list under an Illinois juror statute selecting jurors from “legal voters.”
- The commissioners initially placed her name on the jury list and sent a questionnaire asking whether any reason prevented her from serving.
- She responded that she knew of no reason, “unless the law does not allow females that privilege.”
- After receiving the response, the commissioners removed her name solely because she was a woman and refused to restore it.
- She sought mandamus compelling the commissioners to place her on the jury list; the trial court overruled the commissioners’ demurrer and granted the writ; the commissioners appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the Nineteenth Amendment and Illinois’s post-amendment suffrage legislation made women eligible or liable for jury service under an existing statute drawing jurors from “legal voters.”
2. Whether “legal voters” in the jury statute should be read dynamically to include newly enfranchised women or fixed to the class of legal voters as understood when the statute was enacted.
3. Whether mandamus was available to compel jury commissioners to list a woman as a prospective juror under the existing statutory scheme.

## Decision

- The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s judgment and denied mandamus.
- The court held that women were not made eligible or liable for jury service merely because they became legal voters for election purposes.
- The court construed “legal voters” in the jury statute as referring to those who were legal voters at the time of enactment, which the court treated as men.
- Because the relator had no clear legal right to placement on the jury list under the statute as construed, mandamus was improper.

## Legal Principles

- The Nineteenth Amendment secures voting rights and does not itself establish juror qualifications or compel states to treat suffrage as conferring jury eligibility.
- Statutory construction focuses on legislative intent as expressed in the enacted language; courts apply the law as written rather than updating it based on later social or political developments.
- Where a statute uses a voter-based classification enacted when the electorate was legally limited to men, later expansion of voting rights does not automatically expand jury eligibility absent legislative action addressing jury service.
- Mandamus requires a clear legal right in the petitioner and a corresponding clear duty in the respondent; it will not issue when eligibility depends on a statutory change not made by the legislature.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that women’s enfranchisement did not, without explicit legislative amendment, alter the meaning of “legal voters” in the Illinois jury statute to include women, so the jury commissioners had no enforceable duty to list the relator for jury service and mandamus was denied.


People ex rel. Fyfe v. Barnett, 150 N.E. 290 (Ill. 1925)