Sworn in as the first woman member of the United States Supreme Court bar, on motion of Albert G. Riddle.
On March 3, 1879, Belva Lockwood was sworn in as a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first woman ever admitted to practice before the nation's highest court. She was admitted on the motion of her friend and fellow attorney Albert G. Riddle, made possible by the act Congress had passed and President Hayes had signed just weeks earlier, on February 15, 1879.
This moment came only after the Court itself had rebuffed her in 1876, when Chief Justice Morrison Waite declared that 'none but men are permitted to practice before us as attorneys and counsellors' — a ruling that reflected the near-universal exclusion of women from the American legal profession's highest ranks at the time.
Lockwood's admission shattered that barrier and opened the door for generations of women lawyers to argue before the Supreme Court. It was the direct product of her own tireless, self-directed campaign: she had drafted the enabling legislation, testified and lobbied before Congress repeatedly across several sessions, and refused to accept exclusion as a permanent condition. Her admission is widely regarded as one of the singular milestones in the history of American women in the law, and it set the stage for her subsequent achievement of becoming the first woman to argue a case before the Court, just over a year and a half later.