Why was there a need for the 20th amendment (or the 15th for that matter) giving women the right to vote?
Shouldn’t the Courts have ruled that the 14th amendment prohibited any type of unequal treatment with regard to voting laws? What rationale was used to say that the 14th amendment did not do that?
Section 2 of the 14th amendment specifically refers to “male inhabitants” and “male citizens”. That would make it hard to argue for it giving women the right to vote.
They could have done what you suggested.
But, likely it was symbolic. Also, it’s much more difficult to overturn an Amendment, than it is to Judicially interpret existing (vague) ones. As long as the 20th is ironclad (it is), women will always have the right to vote unless it is revoked through the rigorous legislative process.
Basically you’re putting the right to revoke it away from nominated Justices into the hands of democratically elected officials.
First of all, to nitpick, it’s the 19th amendment. The 20th changed the date of presidential inaugurations and when Congress first meets.
Second, there had been, in 1874, a Supreme Court ruling, Minor v. Happersatt, in which someone had tried to make the same argument you made…that under the 14th Amendment, women should have the right to vote. The Supreme Court said that the 14th Amendment doesn’t give anyone the right to vote. It argued that:
The right to vote isn’t a “necessary privilege and immunity” to which citizens are entitled.
The 14th Amendment didn’t give anyone the right to vote.
The 15th Amendment was necessary to guarantee that blacks/former slaves had the right to vote, even though they were citizens under the 14th Amendment (so, therefore, the writers of the 14th Amendment never considered that the 14th Amendment gave people the right to vote, or else why would they have to pass the 15th Amendment)
Almost no state allows women to vote, and even states that had been admitted after the 14th Amendment deny women the right to vote (and the federal government apparently didn’t have a problem with that when they accepted those places as states).
When New Jersey took away female suffrage in 1807, the federal government didn’t complain.
Plus you have to remember that once upon a time, the judiciary took the idea of “federalism”- the Federal government had no powers not granted it- dead seriously. Having the Supreme Court [del]pull a ruling out of their asses[/del] find an implied right in previous provisions took off during the 1930s.
Excellent. That was just what I was looking for. Thanks.
The SCOTUS view of the 14th amendment then seems nothing at all like the view of it today.