Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. It was adopted on August 18, 1920. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. It effectively overruled "Minor v. Happersett" (1875), in which a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give women the right to vote.
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution amendment's validity was unanimously upheld in "Leser v. Garnett", . Oscar Leser sued to stop two women registered to vote in Baltimore, Maryland, because he believed that the Maryland Constitution limited the suffrage to men and the Maryland legislature had refused to vote to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Two months before, the federal government had proclaimed the amendment incorporated into the Constitution on August 26, 1920. First, Leser said the amendment "destroyed State autonomy" because it increased Maryland's electorate without the state's consent. The Court answered that the Nineteenth Amendment was worded like the Fifteenth Amendment, which had expanded state