The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Minor v. Happersett that the Constitution does not guarantee women the right to vote.
On March 29, 1875, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision in Minor v. Happersett, ruling that the right of suffrage was not one of the 'privileges and immunities' of citizenship protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Morrison Waite, writing for the Court, held that while women were indeed citizens, the Constitution did not confer upon citizens generally a right to vote, and that this power remained with the individual states.
The decision was a significant legal defeat for the suffrage movement, effectively closing the door on the strategy of using the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause to secure voting rights through the courts. It confirmed that women's enfranchisement would require a constitutional amendment or state-by-state legislative change rather than judicial reinterpretation of existing law.
Despite the loss, the case had lasting historical significance: it clarified the legal landscape for the suffrage movement, redirecting energy toward the campaign for what ultimately became the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, decades after Minor's death. The case remains a foundational citation in American constitutional law regarding the scope of the Privileges and Immunities Clause and is still studied in law schools as an example of the judiciary's early, narrow interpretation of Reconstruction-era amendments.