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.
Prohibition first state to ratify the amendment; the thirty-sixth state to do so, Nebraska, ratified it on January 16, 1919, assuring its passage into law. On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, which provided enabling legislation to implement the Eighteenth Amendment. When the National Prohibition Act was passed on October 28, 1919, thirty-three of the forty-eight states were already dry. Congress ratified the Eighteenth Amendment on January 16, 1920; nationwide prohibition began the next day. During the first years of Prohibition, the new law was enforced in regions such as the rural