In 1920 the 19th Amendment went into effect and gave women the right to vote, but most state electoral laws would’ve still specified that voters be male. Does any state still have that restriction on the books (of course it’d never be enforced).
I don’t know the answer to your question (about which states still have statutes that prohibit women from voting), but I’m pretty sure that it not only wouldn’t be enforced, but it couldn’t be enforced, as a federal law always supersedes a state law. In other words, a state law can’t be more restrictive than a related federal law in terms of allowing or disallowing rights.
-Tofer
It’s worth noting that at the time of the passage of the 19th, many states allowed women’s suffrage already. Indeed, most of the congressmen who voted in favor of the amendment were from those states.
Of course a federal law doesn’t always supercede a state law. Read the tenth amendment. Before the 13th amendment was passed, it was quite explicit that the states were free to set their suffrage requirements as they pleased. That amendment essentially required that all citizens of a state enjoy “equal protection of the law”.
Either that clause (which is certainly rather vague) was not held to apply to women or not to voting rights. Or was never challenged on those grounds. It was understood to apply to black men however, but was widely ignored until the 1954 desegration cases and then in the 1960s. But the 19th amendment (which was explicitly directed to the states) certainly clarified the rights of women to vote.
In recent years, federal law has been held more and more to supercede state law even in cases that would seem to be covered by the 10th amendment. I guess the current courts think of the constitution the way Cheney thinks of treaties. To be followed if you want.
I will raise the question: what clause of the constitution empowers the federal government to prevent California from allowing medical (or other) use of marijuana grown and consumed in California and never crossing a state line? And why was it deemed necessary to pass a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, if you can find such a clause?
Welcome to Earth, Dr. Seldon. Your fame as the creator of psychohistory preceds you. A word in your ear, if I may. In this hemisphere, the preferred spelling is supersede.
Enjoy your stay. 
I can’t say I really agree with the SCOTUS’ development in this area, but since you asked (rhetorically I think), I’ll bite:
The Commerce Clause empowers the federal government to regulate activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. In 1942, the Wickard case came down, which said that even wholly intrastate activities could have a cumulative economic effect on interstate commerce, and thus the federal government could regulate them. Now you can certainly disagree with the way Wickard (and later Gonzales) interpreted the Commerce Clause - but that’s where this all comes from.
Now, why was it deemed necessary to pass a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol? I think it’s a function of two things: (1) there was immense political pressure to pass a Constitutional amendment against alcohol, even though a regular old federal law would have been legally sufficient, and (2) the Wickard line of thinking was not set forth until years after Prohibition, so lawmakers might not have understood the full reach of their abilities under the Commerce Clause.
I am not sure how it played out back in the day. However, I have seen television programs where they set up a booth for women to sign petitions against women’s suffrage outside major events. The line was long and demonstrators were screaming at the petitioners for some reason. I can’t see it surviving a widespread vote.
Few posts so perfectly combine error and irrelevancy.
The requirement that states allow women to vote is found in the United States Constitution, not in a mere statute which would raise issues of federal power and pre-emption.
I haven’t searched all 50 state Constitutions, but I’d be shocked if any still retain language restricting suffrage to males.
Upon preview, I see others have already answered this question. But I spent some time writing this, so I’m posting it anyway.
The interstate commerce clause (Article I, Section 8 - which gives Congress the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
And after that, it’s a matter of interpretation. Over the years there has generally been an expanding view of what constitutes “commerce among the several states”. Historically it has been liberals who have pushed for broader commerce based powers (the New Deal era in the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s were two periods when there were a lot of precedents set on these issues). Conservatives have generally resisted the expansion of the powers granted under this clause.
The specific decision was Ashcroft v. Raich (which later became Gonzales v. Raich) in 2005. The plaintiffs had explicitly claimed that the commerce clause did not give the federal government the power to enforce the Controlled Substance Act to prohibit the use of marijuna for medicinal purposes when it was being produced and used within a single state. The government’s argument was that the Controlled Substance Act in general was directed against interstate drug traffic and was therefore constitutional but that any exemptions to the enforcement of the Act based on specific circumstances would make it impossible to enforce as a whole. Broadly speaking, the government argued that to effectively regulate interstate commerce it had to occasionally stray a little ways past the line.
Chief Justice Rehnquist, who had in the past ruled against a broad interpretation of the commerce clause, stuck to his principles and agreed that the federal government did not have the power to prohibit marijuana under the circumstances involved. He was joined by Justices O’Connor and Thomas. But the majority said that the government’s argument was valid and decided against Raich.
As to the 18th Amendment, my understanding is that back in 1919 when it was enacted, there was much less consensus over the power of the commerce clause. Whether or not the federal government had the legal power to prohibit something like alcohol was still an open question. So rather than worry about the possibility of having laws prohibiting alcohol overturned on constitutional grounds, prohibition supporters used an amendment which was obviously immune to a constitutional challenge.
An interesting (I hope) sidenote to this conversation –
from the Wiki article on Switzerland
I revel (usually silently) in this bit of trivia whenever anyone tries to beat me over the head with how utterly progressive Europe is. It may be, but it ain’t uniformly so!
Well yeah, but do you know why Appenzell Innerrhoden didn’t want women to vote? Because to vote (in cantonal aka “state” elections) you had to have a sword in hand before you went in the public square! Nowadays, you can have a piece of paper instead, but the real men still take the sword as proof of voting eligibility. Voting is by counting raised hands in same public square.
And by the way, women only got the vote in Liechtenstein in 1984, so we beat them by 13 years (since women got the right to vote in federal elections in Switzerland in 1971). Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
And the federal constitution was amended in 1981 to grant equal rights to women (whereas the ERA never passed in the US) - cite (all-about-switzerland.info) - which is one of the reasons why the old-fashioned cantons (e.g. those with the landsgemeinde for voting, like Appenzell Innerrhoden) were eventually forced by the federal government to allow women to vote in cantonal (state) elections.
Furthermore, Switzerland has also had a Jewish woman president (Ruth Dreifuss, 1998 - 1999). So there!
Hari Seldon, the Tenth Amendment is quite alive. But it defines as state prerogatives for legislation those things which were not delegated to the Federal Government, including the interpretation of matters such as the (already mentioned) Interstate Commerce Clause, the Elastic Clause, and the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In other words, picking up a copy of the U.S. Constitution and trying to find out whether Congress or the state legislature has the power to take action X is not quite as simple as checking list A for Congress and invoking the Tenth to make everything else state power.
There’s an excellent Great Debate in whether some of these clauses have been overstrained – but that’s not appropriate for GQ. What is, is my statement above regarding what case law has decided as regards the constitutionality of such matters to date.
With regard to the OP, states will often leave an unconstitutional statute “on the books” until the next time they get around to recodifying that portion of the statutes. I’d guess that all 48 states in the Union at the time of passage of the 19th Amendment have done so by now, but I certainly have no cite.
Rather rude to point out a harmless typo, isn’t it?
Arnold Winkelried: The “President” of Switzerland (aka “the President of the Swiss Confederation”) is a largely ceremonial office, with no real power. Switzerland has no single person with anything like the powers of the US President- they invest Executive powers in a 7 member Federal Council. However, at this point in time I think two of them are indeed women. Nte that the President is a member of said council and has all the normal powers of being on the Federal Council, it is just that nothing much power-wise is gained by being selected “President”.
Many dudes like to point out that this or that European nation “elected a female President” without mentioning that most of such have more or less ceremonial roles with no real power.
The 13th amendment abolished slavery. You mean the 14th amendment, which reduced the representation in the House for any state that restricted the right to vote for any males aged 21 or older. This didn’t exactly prohibit discrimination - it just set a price for it. IANAL, but I’d think that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment couldn’t be interpreted as outlawing discrimination in voting rights because that same amendment sets a cost for that discrimination - a state could do it if it were willing to pay the price.
The 15th amendment outlawed discrimination in voting rights based on race, and the 19th amendment outlawed such discrimination based on sex. The 26th amendment outlawed such discrimination based on age for all citizens over 18. States are still free to restrict voting based on other criteria - for example, they can prevent felons from voting.
I’m going to be very, very lazy here - I’m sure I could look this up somewhere, and maybe even the Supreme Court Case decision is available online - but I’m hoping you’ll forgive the sluggishness. Can you (or anyone) explain in words of few syllables how the court could do this, when the Dredd Scott decision (AIUI) was pretty much an unequivocal defense of property rights within the Union, no matter what?
Is it simply because it was the Federal government, instead of a difference between State laws?
While I take your point here, let me point out that Head of State (whether monarchial or presidential) in a parliamentary state is not merely ceremonial, but incorporate utterly necessary powers that are either so routine or so extraordinary and rarely used that we see most power as being invested in the Head of Government (PM, Premier, Kanzler, or whatever). But one of the great problems in America, the “opposing the President is unpatriotic/treasonous/evil” meme (and over the last 75 years both parties have played that card a few times each), results directly from his being both Head of State and Head of Government.
Yes I knew that. I’m from Switzerland. The president’s job (aside from performing his / her duties on the federal council) is mostly speaking at important functions when foreign heads of state visit. Nevertheless! Women’s rights have made big strides in Switzerland.