Women's Suffrage Centennial Celebration

Thursday, November 5, 2020 3:30 – 4:30 PM

Session Thursday Plenary 3:30-4:30 pm| Women's Suffrage Centennial Celebration

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing and protecting women’s constitutional right to vote. The passage marked the largest expansion of democracy in the history of our country. This panel will explore the history of the civil rights campaign for women’s suffrage and the passage of the 19th Amendment, as well as its relevance to modern voting rights, equal protection, and gender and APA equality issues. This panel will also educate our audience about current voter protection efforts to promote the full and equal exercise of the right to vote and to participate in our democracy.

Moderator: Kathleen Chen, Senior Associate Director of Legal Affairs, University of Pennsylvania

Speakers: Grace Chung Becker, Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, DOJ - Civil Rights Division Dale Ho, Director, ACLU - Voting Rights Project Marina Jenkins, Director of Litigation & Policy, National Democratic Redistricting Committee Aarti Kohli, Executive Director of Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus

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Women’s Suffrage Centennial Celebration

Speakers • Dale Ho, Director, Voting Rights Project at ACLU • Grace Chung Becker, Former Assistant Attorney General, DOJ, Civil Rights Division • Aarti Kohli, Executive Director of Advancing Justice, Asian Law Caucus • Marina K. Jenkins, Director of Litigation & Policy, National Redistricting Foundation. National Democratic Redistricting Committee Moderator • Kathleen Chen, Senior Associate Director of Legal Affairs, University of Pennsylvania

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19th Amendment

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

August 26, 1920: The 19th Amendment (U. S. Const. amend. XIX) is quietly signed into law by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, granting women the right to vote.

Women’s Suffrage Centennial Celebration

Carrie Chapman Catt summarized the effort involved in securing passage of the 19th Amendment:

"To get the word 'male' in effect out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign... During that time they were forced to conduct fifty-six campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to get State constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses.

Source: https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/keyssar_-_chapter_6_excerpt.pdf

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Post-19th Amendment The Nineteenth Amendment prohibits voting discrimination on the basis of sex, but not race

For example, the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal law in place from 1882 to 1943, continued preventing Chinese Americans from becoming citizens, which in turn prevented them from being able to vote. Similar laws followed this Act.

Asian American Suffragists included Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee: • “[Woman suffrage] is nothing more than a wider application of our ideas of justice and equality. We all believe in the idea of democracy; woman suffrage or the feminist movement (of which woman suffrage is a fourth part) is the application of democracy to women.” The Voting Rights Act is passed in 1965

Source: American Baptist Historical Society archives, available at https://timtseng.net/2013/12/12/asian-american-legacy-dr-mabel-lee/

Recent acts of APA Voter Discrimination

Source: https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/report/50-years-voting-rights-act-asian-american-perspective

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The 2020 Election Asian Americans are the fastest growing of any major racial or ethnic group in the United States. Between 2010 and 2017, the AAPI population in the United States ballooned from 18 million to more than 22.6 million, an increase of 25.7 percent. Yet, numerous barriers to their civic engagement remain, including a lack of civics education, outreach, and in-language materials for AAPI voters, as well as efforts to suppress electoral participation of voters of color.

As recently as 2014, Asian American voter turnout was only 28 percent nationwide. By 2018, turnout had grown to 42 percent—a sizable increase, but still significantly lower than the turnout rates for whites and blacks (57 percent and 51 percent, respectively). AAPI voter turnout in the 2020 election cycle remains an open question.

Source: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/voting-in-2020/strengthening-the-asian-american-electorate/

The 2020 Election TBD depending upon election - Gerrymandering - Mail-in Ballot Voting - Language Access

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CLE CODE:

BOLD

Questions?

5 TRANSCRIPT

Searching for Equality: The Nineteenth Amendment and Beyond

A conversation between United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge M. Margaret McKeown

Washington, D.C.

Monday, February 10, 2020

5 6 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5

PARTICIPANTS: Listed in order of appearance

Welcome:

MICHELLE M. WU Associate Dean, Library Services, Georgetown University Law Center

Introduction:

JUDY PERRY MARTINEZ President, American Bar Association

GRACE PARAS Editor-in-Chief, Volume 108, The Georgetown Law Journal

Discussion:

HON. M. MARGARET MCKEOWN Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

HON. RUTH BADER GINSBURG Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 7

Dean Michelle Wu: Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Wu, and on behalf of Dean Treanor, I want to welcome you to ªSearching for Equality: The Nineteenth Amendment and Beyond,º which is cosponsored by Georgetown Law and the ABA [American Bar Association]. I am honored to open this event and introduce to you Judy Perry Martinez of the law ®rm Simon, Peragine, Smith & Redfearn in New Orleans. She is also the president of the ABA for the 2019±2020 year. President Martinez has served on numerous ABA groups, including as chair of the committee that evaluates nomi- nees to the federal courts. She has also served as the ABA's lead representative to the United Nations, and as a member of the ABA Board of Governors and its executive committee. She was chair of the ABA's Presidential Commission on the Future of Legal Services and its Commission on Domestic Violence. She was also a member of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, its task force on Building Trust in the American Justice System, and its council of the ABA Center on Diversity. President Martinez worked at Northrop Grumman from 2003 to 2015 as Assistant General Counsel before becoming Vice President and Chief Compliance Of®cer. She then spent a year in residence at the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University before returning to Simon, Peragine. We're delighted to have her with us today. Please join me in wel- coming President Martinez. President Judy Martinez: Thank you, Dean Wu, and thanks to all of you who are gathered here today. The Nineteenth Amendment centennial offers us a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate a watershed of American history that paved the way for the largest expansion of democracy in the history of our nation. This year, we recognize courageous historical efforts to gain and exercise the right to vote. The suffrage movement created unprecedented and long-overdue opportunities for women to become involved politically, serving as a model for activists today. But as we celebrate, we will not squander the historical gift of the Nineteenth Amendment because we must also examine the challenges of democracy and equal rights that face us today. The suffrage movement was neither wholly united, nor inclusive, and rati®cation did not take a straight path forward. The movement was fractured in the approaches suffrage groups chose to follow. It was sometimes divided by race and class, and at times haunted by racism. There are many legacies of the Nineteenth Amendment to explore and much more work to do. Not only for the bene®t of women, but also, of course, for the bene®t of our entire democracy. We must overcome the barriers to full democratic participation. We must achieve full enfranchisement for those who, by law, currently have the right to vote and others who, in a just society, should have the right to vote. While the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments meant that voting rights could no longer be denied because of race or sex, many voters still face ballot restrictions. New constructs evolved, some by misguidedÐif not malignantÐ design to strip away the right to vote from otherwise-eligible persons. Other 8 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5 challenges continue today, including accessibility to polling places for people with disabilities. The American Bar Association is committed to promoting the democratic val- ues that are the cornerstone of equal justice under the law. That is why we are so proud to celebrate and participate in the commemoration of the Nineteenth Amendment. Our efforts are led by Honorable Margaret McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court, who will be facilitating the conversation with Justice Ginsburg. We're partnering with law schools to present programming, provide resources to state and local and af®nity bar associations, develop public education materials, and devote this year's May 1st Law Day to the theme entitled, ªYour Vote, Your Voice, Our Democracy: The Nineteenth Amendment at 100.º I thank Georgetown Law for being our gracious host, and of course Justice Ginsburg for her participation in the program today. May our work together not only pay tribute to those who came before us and sacri®ced on our behalf, but also help us make our democracy stronger in our own timeÐfor everyone. It's now my pleasure to introduce Grace Paras, Editor-in-Chief of The Georgetown Law Journal. Grace has been working with the ABA on a special edition of The Georgetown Law Journal that will be published later this year. Before law school, Grace's career centered on access-to-counsel initiatives for detained immigrants. In addition, she's serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal and is a Blume Public Interest Scholar here at Georgetown Law. After graduation, Grace plans to work at a nonpro®t doing impact litigation on public-interest issues before clerking for the Southern District of New York, and then the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. I give you Grace Paras. Thank you. Grace Paras: Hello, my name is Grace Paras, and I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Volume 108 of The Georgetown Law Journal. I'm honored to be here, and excited to witness a conversation between two extraordinary legal minds: Justice Ginsburg and Judge McKeown. As mentioned, I'm up here because the Journal is publishing a special issue commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. In this issue, we'll have four pieces. They'll cover the Nineteenth Amendment's legacy as it touches voting rights, pregnancy discrimination, LGBTQ rights, and race± gender intersectionality. These pieces will be authored by professors Rick Hasen, Nan Hunter, Leah Litman, Catherine Powell, Camille Gear Rich, and Reva Siegel. We're very excited to partner with the ABA today, and we're especially grate- ful for the presence of the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown, who is the chair of the Committee and has been our partner in creating this special issue. Judge McKeown was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1998 by President Bill Clinton. After becoming the ®rst in her family to go to college, we are very proud that she ended up here at Georgetown Law. She's continued to serve the Georgetown Law community through her role 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 9 as chair of the Georgetown Law Board of Visitors for many years, and she also received an honorary doctorate from Georgetown Law. Judge McKeown teaches at the University of San Diego Law School, and she has received countless awards. Two of the most notable, given this event's part- nerships, are the ABA Margaret Brent Women of Achievement Award and Georgetown University Law Center's Drinan Award for Public Service. But I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that she has also won the Girl Scouts' Cool Women Award. I don't think there's ever been a more appropriate recipient. Besides all the amazing credentials I've listed about Judge McKeown, there are many additional reasons Judge McKeown is ªcool.º She was the ®rst female partner at Perkins Coie; she's argued before the Supreme Court; she chairs the Ninth Circuit's Workplace Environment Committee; and she was appointed by Chief Justice Roberts to the National Workplace Conduct Working Group. She travels all over the world assisting foreign judiciaries with their judicial ethics codes and implementation of rule-of-law initiatives, and she even survived an avalanche during a mountain-climbing expedition in Tibet. So, without further ado, I am thrilled to invite ªcool woman,º the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown to the stage, where she will lead a conversation with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Thank you. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Thank you so much, everyone. Please be seated, be seated. Hon. M. Margaret McKeown: Good evening, and thank you to Justice Ginsburg for joining us tonight. I was looking at your record, Justice Ginsburg, and I noticed that you've had a lot of name changes over the years. You were called ªKikiº when you were little, for ªkicky baby.º Then you went by a more digni®ed name: Ruth. Then you became Professor Ginsburg. Then you became Judge Ginsburg. And ®nally, Justice GinsburgÐand most people would just quit there. But you have this new moniker of ªNotorious RBG.º Can I just call you Justice Ginsburg? Justice Ginsburg: You can call me Ruth. Judge McKeown: Okay, Ruth. On behalf of Georgetown Law and the American Bar Association, thanks for being here. I know these are two institu- tions with which you've had a long association, and of course, we're here tonight to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. While your career has focused on equality very broadly, I want to go back in time and talk about the Amendment. You said at one point that you wished your mother could have lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve, and when daughters were treated equally to sons. Justice Ginsburg: When daughters were cherished as much as sons. Judge McKeown: So, what do you imagine your mother would have been or done had she lived in such an age? And is it true that she marched on behalf of the Nineteenth Amendment? Justice Ginsburg: Yes, my mother was eighteen when the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution. When she was ®fteen and sixteen, she marched in parades in New York. 10 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5

My mother's mind was bright as could be. She might have been a university professor, or a university president, or a legal luminary, but those occupations were far beyond her reach. She grew up in a large family. Six of her siblings survived into adulthood. She graduated high school at age ®fteen. Only one child in her family was a university graduate, the eldest son. My mother went to work at age ®fteen to help support the family, which would gain no income from the eldest son during his years at Cornell University. If any child would have a university education, it would not be the eldest or any daughter. It would be the eldest son. Judge McKeown: As we talk further, I will ask you whether you think we've actually achieved that situation, where daughters are cherished as much as sons. But let me turn to the Nineteenth Amendment. Justice Harlan once wrote that the Nineteenth Amendment merely gives the vote to women. And I know that your dissent in the voting rights case, Shelby County v. Holder, suggests that you might actually have a more robust view of what something like the Nineteenth Amendment means in terms of voting rights. So, in your view, what is the legacy of the Nineteenth Amendment? Justice Ginsburg: It was the ®rst step toward equal-citizenship stature for women. Some of the suffragists had high hopes for the Nineteenth Amendment. Strictly, it says the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex. But if women were to have equality in the political domainÐthat is, if they were part of the political constituency and could voteÐthen how could you abide sub- ordination of women in the civil domain? For example, if a woman wanted a loan, she had to get her husband's permission or he had to sign for it. The courts interpreted the Nineteenth Amendment strictly, said it gave the women the right to vote and nothing more. One of the controversies concerned women serving on juries. In the not-so-good-old days, women weren't called for jury duty. Another was running for of®ce. Yet passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was a miracle of sorts because everyone who voted for it, in Congress and in the states, was male. The suffragists had to sell votes for women to an all-male audience, and that was no easy task. But many of them hoped it would do more than allow women to vote. I mentioned jury duty and running for of®ce. The National Woman's Party was the more radical wing of the Suffrage Movement. In its members' view, if the Nineteenth Amendment was going to be interpreted restrictively, we needed something else. So they introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, and almost every year thereafter, until at last Congress let it out. The Nineteenth Amendment was the beginning, but strong feminists believed women should have equality in all ®elds of human endeavor, so we needed an Equal Rights Amendment [ERA]. In my view, we still do. Judge McKeown: Going back in time, to 1973, you wrote in the ABA Journal that we needed an Equal Rights Amendment. Justice Ginsburg: Yes. 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 11

Judge McKeown: And one of the reasons you gave was it would be great for your granddaughters to pick up the Constitution and see this equality in the Constitution. Justice Ginsburg: I've been asked many times, well, haven't we, through the vehicle of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, gotten to about the same place the ERA would take us? And my answer is: not quite, although if you pick up law books today, state or federal law books once riddled with gender-based differentials, you will ®nd that almost all the explicit gender-based differentials are gone. Every constitution in the world written since the year 1950Ðeven Afghanistan'sÐhas the equivalent of an Equal Rights Amendment. But our Constitution does not. I would like to show my granddaughters that the equal- citizenship stature of men and women is a fundamental human right. It should be up there with free speech, freedom of religion, bans on discrimination based on race or national origin. The Constitution's Preamble says, ªWe the People . . . in Order to form a more perfect Union.º The Union will be more perfect if we added this clarion statement to our fundamental instrument of government: Men and women are persons of equal-citizenship stature. Even if the statement would be largely symbolic, it is an important symbol. Why should the rest of the world have the equivalent of an ERA while the United States lags behind? Judge McKeown: Well, as you also point out, there is a distinction between the Equal Protection Clause and then having an actual amendment that lays it out. Years ago, I was involved in some litigation involving the extension of the deadline on the Equal Rights Amendment, and we recently had Virginia pass the Equal Rights Amendment. So leaving aside whether any deadlines could be extended, what's your prognosis on when we will get an Equal Rights Amendment on the federal level? Justice Ginsburg: I would like to see a new beginning. I'd like it to start over. There's too much controversy about a latecomer Virginia ratifying long after the deadline passed. Plus, a number of states have withdrawn their rati®cation. If you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said, ªWe've changed our mindsº? Judge McKeown: You mentioned women on juries, and so I take some pride in being born in Wyoming, which was the ®rst territory and the ®rst state to grant women the right to vote. Justice Ginsburg: You can tell me if this is true: The reason Wyoming did that is they wanted women to come out there, marry the men, and settle. Judge McKeown: Well, that's one reason. We like to say, ªHow the West was won.º But in fact, the West was far ahead of the East Coast state by state, territory by territory, in adopting the right to vote. But, there were several reasons, not all of them good. One was, they wanted to have women come out and marry. But in fact, women were actually populating the territory quite signi®cantly. One of the other reasons is that at least one of the political parties was losing and they 12 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5 thought, well, maybe their only hope was to get more voters. And the only way to get more voters was to give women the right to vote. So sometimes good things come out of bad motives, I suppose might be one way to say it. Justice Ginsburg: Another state to give women the right to vote early on was Utah. Judge McKeown: Yes. Well, there's a great story about the Nineteenth Amendment. Tennessee was the last to give the right to women; and there was a particular legislator who was inclined to vote against it. But his mother that morn- ing put a little note in his pocket, and basically said, ªDo the right thing.º Justice Ginsburg: ªBe a good boy.º Judge McKeown: ªBe a good boy.º So, I think it pays to listen to your mother, because he ultimately voted in favor of the Amendment. And then, of course, that vote pushed the Amendment over the line and we got the Nineteenth Amendment. So, it's interesting when you look at the language of the Nineteenth Amendment. Of course, it doesn't say anything about women at all. It talks about the right of citizens of the United States. The right to vote should not be either denied or abridged on account of sex. Justice Ginsburg: It was modeled on the Fifteenth Amendment. Judge McKeown: The Fifteenth Amendment, exactly. So the Amendment talked about citizens, not about women. And this catchphrase, ªon account of sex,º also has some similarity to ªon the basis of sex,º and language we see in the discrimination statutes. The public is quite familiar with this phrase, now, ªon the basis of sex,º because of the movie title On the Basis of Sex, of which you're the star, although you're not in it directly. And it was based on the ®rst Federal Court of Appeals case you had, Moritz v. Commissioner of the IRS. My question is, going back to the ªNotorious RBGº moniker, you have become quite famous. In addition to your work on the Court, you've taken on a movie-star status that is probably somewhat unusual for a Justice. So how does one, I wouldn't say reconcile, but how do you deal with all of this? Justice Ginsburg: It is amazing. I am soon to be eighty-seven years old, and everyone wants to take a picture with me! Judge McKeown: Well, I think all of those here would like to come on down for a photo as well. Justice Ginsburg: The Notorious RBG was created by a law student, an NYU second-year law student. It was the year that the Supreme Court decided the Shelby County case, which nulli®ed the key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law was renewed periodically with large majorities on both sides of the aisle, and it had recently been renewed. The way the Voting Rights Act worked was, if you had a record of keeping African-Americans from voting, you could not pass any new election law without preclearing, either with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice or a three-judge federal district court in D.C. That provided a check on laws that were aimed at suppressing minority voters. You couldn't pass the law unless you got it precleared. The law was attacked as 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 13 obsolete. The argument was that some states that might have discriminated in 1965 are no longer denying African-Americans the right to vote. The statute had a built-in check to take care of that kind of situation. It was a bailout provision. If you have had a clean record for X number of years, you can apply to be released from preclearance. But the majority of my Court thought the formula was obsolete. It needed to be done over. One of the points I made in my dissent was, what member of our Congress is going to stand up and say, ªMy state, or my city, or my county is still keeping African-Americans from voting, so please keep us under the gun of the preclearance systemº? That just wasn't going to happen. Who knows more about the political world, the Congress or the Court? Congress said, ªWe want the Voting Rights Act. It's working well.º And the Court said, ªYou can't have it unless you change the coverage formula.º Judicial activism? Congress overwhelmingly passed and renewed the law, but the Court nulli®ed its key provision. Well, this second-year student was angry about the decision. She thought, ªThe legislation was really working and the Supreme Court stopped it.º Then she thought more and decided that anger is a useless emotion. It just gets you riled up, but it doesn't move you forward. So she wanted to do something positive. She took not my full dissenting opinion, but the summary of it I read from the bench the day the decision was handed down, and put the bench announcement on Tumblr. From there, it went out into the wild, blue yonder. That happened, I think, because young people yearned for something positive, something inspirational. The second-year student, by then a law school graduate, paired with a journalist to write a book called Notorious RBG. The book is now the basis for an exhibition traveling around the country. It opened in Los Angeles, then moved on to Philadelphia, and currently is in Chicago. Some months from now it will come to New York. There's a Notorious RBG for adult readers, and a Notorious RBG for young readers. And there are many children's books, even coloring books, about me. Judge McKeown: Well, it's probably true that many Americans would have had trouble naming a Supreme Court Justice, except they would have no trouble now because of all this publicity. And you've really become an icon, I think for children, women, and the public. How has it changed your life? Justice Ginsburg: It's changed my judicial assistants' lives because we are ¯ooded with requests and invitations. I could be getting an award every day of the week. Judge McKeown: Well, we don't have an award for you tonight, but we are just happy to have you here! Justice Ginsburg: I should say something you didn't yet mention. The script- writer for On the Basis of Sex is my nephew. I asked him, ªWhy did you choose the Moritz case? It wasn't reviewed by the Supreme Court.º His answer was that 14 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5 he wanted the ®lm to be as much the story of a marriage as the story of the development of a legal strategy. I think he succeeded in that. Before On the Basis of Sex, there was a documentary called RBG done by Betsy West and Julie Cohen. Years before, those two women had done a special for PBS about the revived Women's Movement starting in the late 1960s and con- tinuing through the 1970s. They interviewed all kinds of people for it, people on both sides. There was an interview with Phyllis Schla¯y, who single handedly brought down the Equal Rights Amendment. There was Gloria Steinem, and many more. I was one of the people interviewed. The creators of that documentary decided they would like to do one focused on the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) litigation efforts in the 1970s to invigorate the Equal Protection Clause so that it works for women and men. Judge McKeown: I just want you to know, I took my law clerks to see both of these movies. But you mentioned regarding Shelby County, the dissent. And one of the out- ¯ows of Notorious RBG has been a whole series of paraphernalia, and related items that one can buy, including a little pin called the dissent-collar pin. Would you share with us your thinking about the dissent collar? Justice Ginsburg: I do have a dissent collar. Years ago, Glamour Magazine gave me a Lifetime Achievement Award. It came with a bag ®lled with goodies. One of them was what became my dissent collar. It looked to me just right for dissents. Nowadays, I get a collar perhaps once a week. They come from all over the world. People send me two kinds of wearable things: collars and scrunchies. Judge McKeown: I hope you're not replacing the dissent collar in any way. It will keep its status and position in your chambers. And around your neck. Justice Ginsburg: My majority-opinion collar has multiplied, so there's some variety in those. Judge McKeown: And some variety in the scrunchies as well. Justice Ginsburg: Yes. Judge McKeown: Going back to the suffragists, one of the things that they did to raise money was to sell cookbooks. And there was sort of a double entendre to the whole endeavor, because they wanted to show that women could have a role in the kitchen and outside the kitchen. I know that in your family, Marty had a particularly prominent role in the kitchen as the chef, and maybe your role was a little less illustrious. But you did raise two amazing children. And we now hear this buzzword now about ªwork± life balance,º which I don't even think had come into the lexicon when you were raising your children. Would you share how you navigated your home and profes- sional life as you moved through your various stages? Justice Ginsburg: Marty was a super cook. After our marriage, we spent our ®rst two years together at the artillery base in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was in military service. Marty had been a chemistry major at Cornell until golf practice interfered with chemistry labs. So he switched to government, which was my major. 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 15

My cousin sent him, as a joke, an English translation of The Escof®er Cookbook. Marty started with the basic stocks, and he worked his way through. I still have the book. Food stains all over its pages. Our arrangement: I was the everyday cook, and Marty was the weekend-and-company cook. I was never allowed to cook for anyone who wasn't in the family. I made seven things. The recipes came from a book called The 60 Minute Chef. Sixty minutes from the time you enter your home until dinner is on the table. I cooked in rotation; after I got to seven, I went back to one. Jane, my daughter, when she was in her high school years, became increasingly aware of the enormous difference between daddy's cooking and mommy's cooking. She decided that not only should daddy be the weekend-and-company cook, he should be the everyday cook as well. For me, it was like Tom Sawyer getting the fence painted. We've been living in Washington D.C. since 1980; I've not cooked a meal in all those years. When Marty died, my daughter Jane felt responsible for phasing me out of the kitchen. So, she comes once a month, cooks up a storm, makes individual dinners for me, which we put in the freezer, and then we do something nice in the evening. After Marty died, Martha Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Alito, decided that the tribute just right for Marty would be a cookbook containing some of his recipes. It's called Chef Supreme. The supreme chef is Marty. Each section is introduced by the spouse of another Justice, in seniority order, starting with Maureen Scalia. It is one of the best-selling books in the Supreme Court gift shop. Judge McKeown: I think that's quite an achievement to say you haven't cooked a meal for decades. Justice Ginsburg: The Supreme Court spouses meet quarterly for lunch, and they rotate catering responsibilities. Marty was always the number-one pick to be co-caterer. Judge McKeown: Yes, for a good reason. The ABA Commission on the Nineteenth Amendment is taking after the suffragists, and we're going to publish a digital cookbook to celebrate the Nineteenth Amendment. I wonder what recipe would Marty have contributed to that? And which one of your rotating seven would you pick out? Justice Ginsburg: You wouldn't want any of them. I thought my one ®sh, two ®sh, red ®sh, blue ®sh was pretty good, but my children don't agree. Marty's lime souf¯eÂ was sublime, and then there was his ultimate unkosher dish, pork braised in milk. His crowning achievement was French baguettes. He worked for a year to get that recipe right, and he had the highest praise he could get: the French ambassador to the United States said that Marty's baguettes were the best outside France. Judge McKeown: Well, that's a tribute. I think the suffragists would be quite proud to say they've achieved some equality because of Marty's contribution to the culinary world, along with the tax world and the professor world as well. 16 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5

I want to talk with you now about your life as an advocate. When I was a student here at Georgetown, I took one of the very ®rst sex discrimination classes, and I was somewhat ¯ummoxed about where I would look for source information. I was advised, ªyou should write to Professor Ginsburg,º which I did. And you kindly supplied me with enough to get through a paper for the end of the semester. But of course, things have changed quite a bit in terms of the number of women in law school. We have just over ®fty percent and this year, they've just done a big celebration of the editors-in-chief at the top law journals, including Georgetown, where Grace Paras is the Editor-in-ChiefÐthey're all women! So, things have changed somewhat since you were one of nine women in a classroom? Justice Ginsburg: In an entering class of over 500 students, nine were women. Harvard Law School didn't begin to admit women until 1950±1951. That was the ®rst year; I came in 1956. My class had nine. Marty was one year ahead of me; his class had ®ve. When I was a ®rst-year student, there was one woman on the law review. She was in the second-year class. I was the lone woman in my class. I never had, in all my university yearsÐnot in undergraduate school, and certainly not in law schoolÐa woman teacher. At Cornell, a woman taught physical education, but that was it. No women in academic ®elds. So, for me, the change is just huge. When I started law school in 1956, women were just three percent of the lawyers across the country. On the bench, they just weren't there. The ®rst woman appointed to a federal court of appeals, Florence Allen, was appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934. She was named to the Sixth Circuit. She retired in 1959, the year I graduated from law school. Then there were none again until 1968, when President Johnson appointed Shirley Hufstedler to the Ninth Circuit, Margaret's court. The ®rst woman ever to be appointed to a federal district court judgeship was Burnita Shelton Matthews. She was a recess appointee in 1948, and got a perma- nent seat in 1949. Burnita Shelton Matthews was general counsel to the National Woman's Party. She was a soft-spoken woman from Mississippi, but she was made of steel. In the district court, she hired only women as law clerks. Her reason: her colleagues hired only men. She was responsibleÐwe're talking about the 1950sÐfor the admission of the ®rst African-American to the bar of the D.C. District Court. When I got to D.C., she was well into her nineties. She was no longer sitting, but she would come to chambers occasionally. And it was such a treat for me to hear her stories. She spoke about picketing the White House. She was going to law school at night. She had a day job, but she took part in the picketing at the White House, when Wilson was president. It took him a while, a long while, before he became a supporter of the Nineteenth Amendment. So, she'd go to the White House, hold up a little sign that said, ªVotes for womenº and if the police tried to hassle her, she would never talk back. She didn't want to risk having an arrest record, which might hold up her admission to the bar. 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 17

The National Woman's Party was headquartered on land where the U.S. Supreme Court now stands. When the government took the property to build the Court, Burnita Shelton Matthews, who happened to be a specialist in eminent domain, asked for a high price. The government, the Department of Justice, argued, ªIt's just a ramshackle old building. It's not worth very much.º Burnita Shelton Matthews called as a witness a member of a group called the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia to testify about the building having been used as a jail for notorious Confederate spies during the Civil War. And before that, it was the temporary Capitol when the Capitol burned down in the War of 1812. The government didn't relent. Finally, Matthews introduced a photograph of a notorious Confederate spy, who happened to be a woman, taken inside the building. At last, the government threw in the towel. Matthews won for the National Woman's Party the largest condemnation award the United States had ever paid up until that time. She was also active in the American Bar Association. She sought in that arena to counter opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. Opponents feared that the Amendment would end protective labor legislation for women. Matthews wrote an article in the ABA Journal pointing out that so- called protective legislation often worked to protect men's jobs from women's competition. No night work for women. Well, if you serve tables in a restaurant, tips are higher at night than during the day. The protection allowed women to work no more than forty hours per week. If you want to earn double time or time and a half, you want overtime hours, but you're ªprotectedº from them and the earnings they garner. During World War II, many occupations were ®lled by women because the men were away ®ghting the war. One such occupation was bartending. The state of Michigan passed a law providing that a woman could not tend bar unless the establishment was owned by her father or her husband. The plaintiffs in that case were mother and daughter Goesaert: Mother owned the tavern; her daughter was the bartender. This law could have put them out of business immediately. Their case got to the Supreme Court in 1948. The Court's reaction: ªBars can be raunchy places, so we need to protect women from that atmosphere. Michigan does so by prohibiting them from being bartenders.º Burnita Shelton Matthews saw from the beginning that these so-called ªprotectionsº were not real favors for women. She was a very effective advocate. Judge McKeown: You argued in the Supreme Court at a time when there were few women advocates. And, of course, you argued a number of these upside-down cases on discrimination. We know that there are inroads being made little by little in terms of women arguing in the Supreme Court. But you probably know a lot more now than you did when you argued your ®rst case in the Supreme Court. So, what do you know now having been a Justice and being on the other side of the bench that you would like to convey to advocates before the Court, or the courts of appeals, or otherwise? 18 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5

Justice Ginsburg: I knew then what has been reaf®rmed over and over again. The Supreme Court is, what lawyers call, a hot bench. That is, every Justice has done his or her homework and is well armed for oral argument. That's not univer- sally true of appellate benches. I remember one argument in a federal circuit courtÐI will not say which number. Judge McKeown: I don't think it was ours! Justice Ginsburg: My students came with me to this argument. I thought our reply brief was devastating. I started arguing and sensed early on that the panel hadn't even read my opening brief. So I had to retract to being a kindergarten teacher and lead the judges gently in the direction I wanted them to go. Dealing with a cold bench can be disillusioning for an advocate. Judge McKeown: Right. Well, the opposite of that, of course, is when advocates are making an argument and then they're interrupted. Some of the more recent studies have suggested that both female Justices and female advocates are interrupted more than their male counterparts. And they've even suggested that the male Justices interrupt the female Justices three times as often. And curiouslyÐ and maybe not so curiouslyÐsometimes this pattern has been reversed, where there are gender-related cases. Why is this happening in 2020? Justice Ginsburg: I'll tell you a funny story about interruption. Some years ago, there was a headline in USA Today. It read, ªRude Ruth Interrupts Sandra.º In oral argument, a Justice may ask a ®rst question. Sandra asked a question. I thought she was done. She wasn't. I asked a question. Sandra shot back, ªJust a minute. I have follow-up questions.º That precipitated the ªrude Ruthº story. At lunch, I said, ªSandra, I'm so sorry I stepped on your question.º She replied, ªRuth, it's okay. The guys do it to each other all the time.º I contacted the reporter who wrote the story about my interrupting Sandra. I suggested that he watch the court for the next two sittings and see if he observes the men stepping on each other's questions. After that time elapsed, he said, ªYes, they do. But I didn't notice it when it came from men.º He did notice it when two women were involved. There was a woman, a professor of linguistics, who tried to explain why this happened. She said, in effect, ªJustice O'Connor is the girl of the Golden West. She grew up on the Lazy B Ranch. Ginsburg is a fast-talking Jew from New York. Their styles are different.º Well, people who knew the two of us understood that Sandra got out two words for my every one. But again, it was a stereo- type at work. It was to the good that the article about interruption was written, because I think the disparity was largely unconscious. I expect you will see a change in that regard. You mentioned that now women are at least half the law students. One of the interesting things about the increase is that a big jump up in women's enrollment is attributable to minority women. That's a healthy development. But as to law clerksÐand you tell me if it's true of the Ninth CircuitÐwe get many more appli- cations from men than from women for Supreme Court clerkships. Of the 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 19 advocates who appear before us, less than twenty percent are women. Now, that's still a huge improvement from the way it once was. The ®rst woman ever to clerk for the Supreme Court was way back in the 1940s. She was Lucile Lomen, who clerked for Justice Douglas. The West Coast deans chose his clerks, and they wrote one year that they had no one of the quality required for them to recommend. He asked, ªWhen you say that, have you considered women? If you have one who's brilliant, I will consider her.º I understand that Lomen's was a successful clerkship. But no second woman appeared until 1968 when Justice Black hired Margaret Corcoran. She had a special entree to Justice Black's chambers: her father was a well-known Democratic Party opera- tive. They called him ªTommy the Cork.º One weekend, the Justice gave Margaret a bunch of cert petitions and said, ªDigest these for me over the weekend.º She came in on Monday; she hadn't done it. She explained that her father, a widower, had to attend a number of party functions, and he needed a woman to accompany him. So she did so instead of dealing with the petitions. The Justice didn't take kindly to that. It wasn't until the 1970s that women showed up as law clerks in numbers. In those days, the Supreme Court had two clerks, not four as we have now. In 1972, the West Coast deans recommended two women to Justice Douglas. He wrote back, ªThat's women's lib with a vengeance.º Judge McKeown: Yes. You probably know I'm writing a book about Justice Douglas, and that ®rst clerk was from the University of Washington, Lucile Lomen, as you said. One thing I want to go back to is Justice O'Connor. Obviously, being the ®rst two female Justices you had some challenges the others didn't. But one time Justice O'Connor asked you, ªWhere would we be if there was no discrimination?º And you answered, ªI think we'd be retired partners from a big law ®rm. But since there was discrimination, we ended up here,º which is not a bad place to end up from most people's perspective. Justice Ginsburg: But we had to make our own path. Judge McKeown: You did. Justice Ginsburg: Let me tell you how Sandra, who stood near the top of her class at Stanford Law School, got her ®rst job. She volunteered to work for free for a county attorney and proposed, ªAt the end of some months, if you think I'm worth it, you can put me on the payroll.º I got a clerkship with a district judge because Gerry Gunther, who was then teaching at Columbia and later transferred to Stanford, called every judge in New York's Eastern and Southern Districts, and every judge on the Second Circuit bench. He ®nally came to one who was a Columbia College and a Columbia Law School graduate, and often took his clerks from Columbia. The judge's response was, ªWell, her record is good, but she has a four-year- old daughter. I can't risk it. Sometimes I need my clerk's aid even on a Sunday.º Gerry said, ªGive her a chance. And if she doesn't work out, there's a young man in her class who is going to a downtown ®rm; he will jump in and take over.º 20 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5

That was the carrot. There was also a stick, and the stick was, ªIf you don't give her a chance, I will never recommend another Columbia student to you.º For the women in my class, getting that ®rst job was a tremendous hurdle. If you got the job, you did it at least as well as the men, so the second job was not the same impediment. Judge McKeown: Well, I certainly would invite you to continue to take a look at your clerkship opportunities in the Ninth Circuit, because we have quite a nice complement of male and female clerks. I know you've hired one of my clerks, but we're seeing the male applicants, of course, are exceeding the female applicants. So, let me go back to another sex discrimination point, and that relates to some of your cases. We have this great bobblehead here, which is representative of a number of things, actually. But one of these items shows you pulling the plug on this safe, where there are pennies inside. And that's a reference to your dissenting opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. And shortly after that, following your dissent, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. What lessons can be learned for students, professors, and judges from the Lilly Ledbetter case? Justice Ginsburg: One lesson is that on questions of statutory interpretation, as distinguished from constitutional interpretation, the Supreme Court does not have the last word. Congress does. In the Ledbetter case, I thought my colleagues had erredÐnot just erred, but egregiously so. The tagline of my dissent in her case was: the ball is now in Congress's court to correct the error into which my colleagues have fallen. There was a groundswell to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. As was true earlier of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Act passed with large majorities of Republicans and Democrats voting for it. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the ®rst piece of legislation President Obama signed when he took of®ce. Lilly's story is one familiar to every woman of my generation and of hers. She was an area manager at a Goodyear Tire plant. When she gained that employment, it was a job dominated by men. When she came on board in the 1970s, she didn't want to be viewed as a troublemaker. She didn't want to rock the boat, she just did her job. Then one day, after she had worked at the plant for years, someone put a slip of paper in her plant mailbox. It contained a series of numbers. She recognized what those numbers represented. They were the pay of every area manager. She saw that the young man she had trained to do the job was earning more than she was earning. So, she decided, ªI've had it. I'll sue.º She began a Title VII lawsuit. She succeeded in the district court. It was a jury case. She got a good verdict. Eventually, her case came before the Supreme Court. The Court ruled, 5±4, ªLilly, you sued too late. Title VII says you must ®le a complaint with the EEOC within 180 days of the discriminatory incident. And you ®led years later. You are way out of time.º In my dissent, I explained why she waited. First, her employer didn't disclose pay ®gures. Also, she didn't want to rock the boat. And if she had complained 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 21 early on, ªThey're paying me less because I'm a woman,º her employers would have answered almost certainly, ªIt has nothing to do with Lilly being a woman. She just doesn't do the job as well as the men.º But when she's been working there year after year and getting good performance ratings, that defenseÐthat she doesn't do the job as well as the menÐis no longer available to them. She has a winnable case. But the Court held she sued too late. My dissent was simple. I said, ªThe discrimination she encountered is repeated every month. It's re¯ected in every paycheck she received. So as long as she sues within 180 days of a paycheck, her suit is timely.º And that is exactly what Congress amended Title VII to sayÐwhat I thought Congress meant all along. Judge McKeown: Common sense. Justice Ginsburg: We might compare Ledbetter's suit to another case of statutory interpretation, also concerning Title VII, Gilbert v. General Electric. In that case, the Supreme Court reached the remarkable conclusion that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is not discrimination on the basis of sex. The world is divided into two kinds of people: nonpregnant people, and they include many women, and pregnant people, all of them women, there's no male to compare them to, so discrimination against them can't be sex discrimination. Justice Ginsburg: In 1978, Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. It said what should have been evident to all members of the then-Supreme Court: Discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is discrimination on the basis of sex. Judge McKeown: On the basis of sex. And sometimes they mean what they say in Congress, correct? Justice Ginsburg: When we're dealing with a statute, Congress can ®x it. When it's a question of constitutional interpretation, we have the last word. In a dissent on a constitutional question, the dissenter is writing for a future Court. We have a long history of dissents. We have seen many dissenting opinions eventually become the law of the land. Even if you go back to the worst decision the Court ever made, the Dred Scott decision, there were two dissenters. Or The Civil Rights Cases in the 1880s, and Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Justice John Marshall Harlan, the ®rst Justice Harlan, dissented in those cases. Moving to the World War I period, recall the free speech dissents by Holmes and Brandeis. Today, they are not questioned as being the proper interpretations of the First Amendment. So, you're writing a dissent for a future Court, one you hope will better understand how the Constitution should bear on particular conduct. Judge McKeown: You've indicated obviously that you're hoping, over time, the Court will see it the way you do, and that's why you're writing for a future age when you're in the dissent in one of these kinds of cases. Right? Justice Ginsburg: Most immediately I'm trying to get one more vote. When I circulate a dissent, that's my ®rst hope, a hope that is often disappointed. But there's always a chance. I remember being assigned a dissent by my senior colleague. It was in a criminal case. The vote was 7±2 at the conference. In the 22 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5 fullness of time, the opinion was released. It came down 6±3. The two had swelled to six, and the seven had shrunk to two. Judge McKeown: But you're not always writing in the dissent, of course, and our little bobblehead here displays another great case. This is one where you wrote for the majority: United States v. Virginia. You can see the bobblehead of Justice Ginsburg is towering over the campus at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). And obviously, the majority struck down VMI's male-only admissions policy. And your good friend and opera colleague, Justice Scalia, wrote a rather spirited dissent . . . Justice Ginsburg: Spicy! Judge McKeown: . . . some say spicy. The legal writers like to say scathing. And he asserted that the Court was destroying VMI. Now I know you've been back there to visit. What do you think of Justice Scalia's prediction? Justice Ginsburg: He was entirely wrong. He thought that admitting women would destroy VMI as we know and love it. The VMI faculty cheered the decision. Something revealing about the case: The title is United States v. Virginia. It's the United States government suing the state of Virginia, saying, ªYou cannot make an educational opportunity available to one sex only.º The faculty saw the admission of women as an opportunity to upgrade the quality of VMI's applicant pool. Many people asked, ªWhat woman would want to go through the ratline and subject herself to VMI's regimen, the cadet's Spartan existence?º I replied, ªWell, I wouldn't. You are a man, and you probably wouldn't either.º But some women want that experience and are well-equipped to pursue it. We were invited to visit VMI for the twentieth anniversary of the decision. As it turned out, I was able to manage the twenty-®rst anniversary. The faculty and staff were so proud of the women cadets. VMI still has the ratline; the quarters for cadets are still Spartan. But the school now welcomes women, some of them aspiring to be engineers or nuclear scientists. VMI's transformation is a great suc- cess story. Judge McKeown: Well, that's why your bobblehead is standing on the campus of VMI. But now women are standing on the campus at VMI as students as well. Justice Ginsburg: I was visiting West Point soon after the announcement that the combat restriction for women would be lifted. The women cadets were elated by that announcement. Judge McKeown: One of the things that you have, I guess not to your name, but to your association, is a workout book, which may not be totally common among the Justices. Not that they don't work out, but they don't have a book about working out. So, what do you actually do to keep in shape? Do you follow The RBG Workout book? Justice Ginsburg: I follow the author, Bryant Johnson. He has been my personal trainer since 1999, the year I had colorectal cancer. My dear husband said after my surgery and long courses of chemotherapy and radiation, ªYou look like a 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 23 survivor of a concentration camp. You must do something to build yourself up.º So I asked around. Did you know Gladys Kessler? She was a U.S. district court judge in D.C. She said, ªI have the just the right person for you. He works at our clerk's of®ce. He's my personal trainer. He would be good for you.º And Bryant has been with me all these years. Now there's a Bryant Johnson-authored book, The RBG Workout book. There's also a calendar. Judge McKeown: It's a good workout book, not that I am quali®ed to recommend a workout book! He's encapsulated pretty carefully what you need to do to keep in shape. Let me ask you, one of the things you've mentioned is cancer giv- ing you a zest for life that you might not have even had before. But would you share with us how being a survivor has shaped you as a person and as a Justice? Justice Ginsburg: Cancer does give you a zest for life you didn't have before. Every day is precious. I've had four cancer bouts since I joined the Court, and I was able to get through them without missing participation in any case. With this latest lung cancer, for one month I couldn't physically be at the Court. But I lis- tened to the arguments on tape, and I had an opinion assignment from that sitting. My colleagues rallied around me and helped me get through some very trying days. Justice O'Connor, who had a mastectomy, was on the bench nine days after her surgery and gave me great advice. She said, ªYou're going to have chemotherapy. Schedule it on Friday. That way you can get over it Saturday and Sunday, and be back at work on Monday.º Judge McKeown: Well, I think you've been a remarkable hero to many who have had cancer and survived it. But, also, just your indomitable spirit is something that keeps other judges going, I want you to know. The same is true for law studentsÐ many of whom are here. I have two questions from the law students I want to ask you. The ®rst question relates to the Equal Protection Clause. The question is: are you satis- ®ed that gender should receive only intermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause? Or should gender classi®cations instead be subject to strict scrutiny? Justice Ginsburg: I've told law students on more than one occasion: watch what we do. Law students like to have secure handholds: there's rational basis, next intermediate scrutiny, then strict scrutiny. Justice O'Connor wrote an opinion saying strict scrutiny, used for racial classi- ®cations, is not necessarily fatal in fact. A number of statutes have been held in- valid under the rational-basis test. So, the bottom, rational basis, is moving up; the top, strict scrutiny, is moving down. I think Justice Thurgood Marshall had it right when he said, ªIn reality, there aren't three tiers. There's a sliding scale, and it depends upon the strength of the government's interest and the importance of the right the person is asserting.º The words of the Equal Protection Clause are: ª[N]or shall any State . . . deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.º Sounds like it ®ts very well, except that the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to deal with the burning issue of the dayÐthe legacy of slavery. In the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment, for the ®rst time, the word ªmaleº appears in the text of the Constitution. 24 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 108:5

Before the Fifteenth Amendment, there was an effort to stop the Southern states from barring African-Americans from voting. The mechanism was if you keep people from the polls, then, to the extent that you are not allowing men to vote, your representation in Congress will shrink in proportion to the people you have kept from voting. It didn't work, so the Fifteenth Amendment passed out- lawing race-based discrimination in voting. By the way, since we started out talking about the Nineteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment follows the wording of the Fifteenth Amendment. But the Fifteenth Amendment was honored in the breach for so many years. One of the concerns of some of the Southern politicians was, does the Nineteenth Amendment mean we will have to allow African-American women to vote? As it turned out, the barriers to minority voters continued, and they affected women as well as men. Initially, the Nineteenth Amendment gave white women the right to vote. It took the Voting Rights Act to begin to break barriers to African-American voters. Judge McKeown: That prior question came from Erin O'Neill, one of the members of The Georgetown Law Journal, and one of my incoming clerks. And of course, we're always told not to read the tea leaves, we're supposed to decide case by case. But we're always reading the tea leaves from the Supreme CourtÐor whatever leaves you choose to scatter that we can read and try to interpret for cases to come. So, here's a related question. This one comes from Max Crema, who is also a Journal member and one of my incoming law clerks. He talks about the fact that, although women formally won the vote 100 years ago, many young women of color are still disenfranchised, particularly through restrictive voting laws. What is your comment on that in terms of where we are going in the voting-rights arena? Justice Ginsburg: I'm pleased that one of my former law clerks is spending a good deal of her time getting eighteen-year-olds to register to vote, especially minority women. She goes with them to the registration place. I think that young people are going to make a difference. What our government does now will affect their lives, so they should care deeply about exercising the right to vote. And there should be concerted efforts to see that before they go to vote, they are regis- tered properly. Judge McKeown: Obviously, registration is an important thing, and nondis- crimination is also important. And you've spent your life in the ®eld of equal protection. For us, it's really a privilege to have you here tonight at Georgetown Law to talk about many of these things. I have about 2,000 more questions, but I am going to shorten it and let you have the last word. Justice Ginsburg: First, on the Nineteenth Amendment, there is a very good exhibition at the Archives. The story is told as accessibly as can be. And it has some funny things in it, like a letter from a woman in Iowa. She wanted to be a soldier, lead the troops; but she insisted women should not have the right to vote. There were inconsistent or outlandish arguments. One was: they're just going to do what their husbands tell them to do, so it won't make any difference. 2020] TRANSCRIPT: SEARCHING FOR EQUALITY 25

Another was: allowing women to vote would cause dissension in the home and lead to divorce and neglect of children. There are cartoons of men taking care of screaming babies so their wives could go off to vote. But the Seneca Falls gather- ing took place in 1848. It's now seventy years later. We have to be persistent, yet patient. What was it that Susan B. Anthony saidÐªFailure is impossibleº? Judge McKeown: Impossible, yes. Justice Ginsburg: She never got to see the Nineteenth Amendment rati®ed, but she knew it would happen. So I recommend the exhibition at the Archives. In my long life, I have seen such positive change. Yes, we worry about our dysfunctional Congress with the parties so sharply divided. But think of how it was, not all that long ago, in 1993, when I was nominated and con®rmed 96±3. No questions asked about the ten years I spent most of my time as co-founder of the ACLU Women's Rights Project and one of four general counsel to the ACLU. Also, Justice Scalia had written about his philoso- phy when he was a law professor, and he had a track record on the D.C. Circuit. The vote for him was unanimous. Justice Breyer, who followed me by a year, also in the 1990s, was con®rmed by a large majority. It hasn't been that way for the last set of nominations, but I am hopeful there will be leaders on both sides of the aisle who will say, ªIt's time to get together and work for the good of the country.º That is my hope, and I would be content if I could see it happen in my lifetime. Judge McKeown: Thank you. Thank you for your time, Justice Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg: Thank you. Dean Michelle Wu: Thank you to Justice Ginsburg and Judge McKeown for a fascinating discussion. Thanks also to ABA president Judy Perry Martinez and Grace Paras for bringing the panel here. Overlooked No More: Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Suffragist With a Distinction... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/obituaries/mabel-ping-hua-lee-ove...

1 of 2 9/29/2020, 5:17 PM Overlooked No More: Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Suffragist With a Distinction... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/obituaries/mabel-ping-hua-lee-ove...

2 of 2 9/29/2020, 5:17 PM Voting Determination Letter https://www.justice.gov/crt/voting-determination-letter-14

Voting Determination Letter

U.S. Department of Justice

Civil Rights Division

Voting Section - NWB 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, W.W. Washington, D.C. 20530 February 11, 2008

Ms. Sara Frankenstein Gunderson, Palmer, Goodsell & Nelson P.O. Box 8045 Rapid City, South Dakota 57709-8045

Dear Ms. Frankenstein:

This refers to the increase in the number of county commissioners from three to five, and the 2007 redistricting plan for Charles Mix County, South Dakota, submitted to the Attorney General pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1973c. We received your submission on December 12, 2007; supplemental information was received through January 28, 2008.

According to the 2000 Census, the County has 9,350 residents, of whom 2,644 (28.3%) are Native American, 177 (1.9%) are Hispanic, 9 (0.1%) are Asian, and 12 (0.1%) are African-American. The County currently elects its commission from three single-member districts. Under the proposed plan, the number of commissioners would increase to five and be elected from single-member districts. An increase in the number of commissioners on the board is a voting change under Section 5. See City of Lockhart v. United States, 460 U.S. 125, 131 (1983) (change in system where county commission increased from a three-member commission to a five-member commission is a voting change). The county also has adopted a redistricting plan for the five single-member districts.

We have carefully considered the information you have provided, as well as information and materials from other interested parties. Under Section 5 of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006, Public Law 109-246, 120 Stat. 577 (2006) ("Voting Rights Act"), the Attorney General must determine whether the submitting authority has met its burden of showing that the proposed change "neither has the purpose nor will have the effect" of denying or abridging the right

1 of 3 9/23/2020, 1:34 PM Voting Determination Letter https://www.justice.gov/crt/voting-determination-letter-14 to vote on account of race. As discussed further below, I cannot conclude that the County has sustained its burden of showing that the proposed change does not have a discriminatory purpose. Therefore, based on the information available to us, I object to the voting changes on behalf of the Attorney General.

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the submitting authority has the burden of showing that a submitted change has neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect. Georgia v. United States, 411 U.S. 526 (1973). See also Procedures for the Administration of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (28 C.F.R. 51.52). In satisfying its burden, the submitting authority must demonstrate that the proposed changes are not tainted, even in part, by an invidious racial purpose; it is insufficient simply to establish that there are some legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for the voting changes. See City of Rome v. United States, 422 U.S. 156, 172 (1980); Busbee v. Smith, 549 F. Supp. 494, 516-17 (D.D.C. 1982), aff'd 459 U.S. 1166 (1983).

The Supreme Court identified a non-exhaustive list of factors that may serve as indicia of a discriminatory purpose in Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Authority, 429 U.S. 252, 256-57 (1977). Those factors include the following: (1) the impact of the official action and whether it bears more heavily on one race than another; (2) the historical background of the action; (3) the sequence of events leading up to the action; (4) whether the challenged decision departs, either procedurally or substantively, from the normal practice; and (5) contemporary statements and viewpoints held by the decision-makers.

Here, an analysis of these factors confirms that the County has not sustained its burden of showing that the proposed change does not have a discriminatory purpose. In the first place, the voting changes appear to have a greater impact on Native Americans because, under the proposed plan, Native American voters can elect their candidate of choice in only one of five districts, as opposed to one in three districts under the current plan. Our election analysis demonstrates that there is no reasonable probability that Native American voters could elect their candidate of choice in District 2 of the proposed plan.

In addition, Charles Mix County and the State of South Dakota have a history of voting discrimination against Native Americans. Native Americans could not vote in the county until 1951. Even when Native Americans received the right to vote, they were discriminated against in registration and other parts of the voting process.

Moreover, the historical background and the sequence of events leading to these voting changes also support an inference of intentional retrogression of Native American voting strength by the county. In January 2005, the county was sued for violations of the Fourteenth Amendment and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Blackmoon v. Charles Mix County. At the time Blackmoon was filed, no Native American had ever been elected to the County Commission in Charles Mix County, despite the significant Yankton Sioux population in the County. Depositions in the case revealed that after the 2000 Census, the County Commissioners decided not to redistrict despite the fact that commissioners knew that the districts did not provide Native Americans the voting strength to elect a candidate of choice.

On March 24, 2005, the court in Blackmoon found that there had been violations of the Fourteenth Amendment because Charles Mix County failed to redistrict after the 2000 Census. Despite the court's finding, the first remedial plan suggested by the county again failed to provide Native Americans with an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. Finally, in 2006, the County agreed to a redistricting plan that included a majority Native American district which could elect a candidate of

2 of 3 9/23/2020, 1:34 PM Voting Determination Letter https://www.justice.gov/crt/voting-determination-letter-14 choice, and this plan was implemented for the 2006 county elections. Under this new plan, the voters elected the first Native American to the county commission in Charles Mix County.

The timing of the adoption of the proposed change to a five member commission raises concerns of a discriminatory purpose. The first petitioner signed the referendum petition to increase the size of the commission on April 3, 2006. Only 46 people signed the initial circulation prior to June 2006. At the June 2006 Democratic Primary election, Ms. Drapeau won, and she would become the first Native American County Commissioner in Charles Mix County because there was no opponent in the general election. Immediately after the primary election, an article about changing the number of county commissioners appeared in The Lake Andes Wave. Momentum for the petition then built, and one thousand signatures were obtained to put the referendum on the ballot. The referendum was held in November 2006, and the measure passed.

Elected officials supported the increase in the number of county commissioners. In particular, the Sheriff and his deputies, actively circulated the petition. According to our contacts in the county, the Sheriff and deputies collected signatures in uniform.

Depositions in Blackmoon reveal that one commissioner admitted that the commissioners decided not to redistrict in 2000 despite the fact that they knew that the districts did not provide Native Americans the voting strength to elect a candidate of choice. Various community members, including Native Americans and non-Native Americans, also have informed the Section that county commissioners have made comments that evidence a racially discriminatory intent.

We note that under Section 5 you have the right to seek a declaratory judgment from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that the proposed changes neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. See 28 C.F.R. 51.44. In addition, you may request that the Attorney General reconsider the objection. See 28 C.F.R. 51.45. However, until the objection is withdrawn or a judgment from the District Court for the District of Columbia is obtained, the increase in the number of county commissioners and the redistricting plan will continue to be legally unenforceable. Clark v. Roemer, 500 U.S. 646 (1991); 28 C.F.R. 51.10.

To enable us to meet our responsibility to enforce the Voting Rights Act, please inform us of the action Charles Mix County plans to take concerning this matter. If you have any questions, you should call Tim Mellett (202-307-6262), Acting Deputy Chief of the Voting Section.

Sincerely,

Grace Chung Becker Acting Assistant Attorney General Civil Rights Division

3 of 3 9/23/2020, 1:34 PM Democracy: An Election Agenda for Candidates, Activists, and Legislator... https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/democracy-ele...

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5 of 5 9/23/2020, 2:14 PM The Long Battle for Women's Suffrage | At the Smithsonian | Smithsoni... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-battle-w...

The Long Battle for Women's Suffrage

Liza Mundy

If you look at black-and-white photographs of suffragists, it’s tempting to see the women as quaint: spectacles and undyed hair buns, heavy coats and long dresses, ankle boots and feathered hats. In fact, they were fierce—braving ridicule, arrest, imprisonment and treatment that came close to torture. Persistence was required not only in the years before the 19th Amendment was ratified, in 1920, but also in the decades that followed. “It’s not as though women fought for and won the battle, and went out and had the show of voting participation that we see today,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the nonpartisan Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It was a slow, steady process. That kind of civic engagement is learned.”

This forgotten endurance will be overlooked no more, thanks to “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence,” a major new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery through January 5, 2020, that features more than 120 artifacts, including the images and objects on these pages. “I wanted to make sure we honored the biographies of these women,” says Kate Lemay, a Portrait Gallery historian and the curator of the exhibit, which portrays the suffragists as activists, but also as students, wives and mothers. “I wanted to recognize the richness of their lives,” Lemay says. “I think that will resonate with women and men today.” The exhibit is part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, intended to be the nation’s most comprehensive effort to compile and share the story of women in this country.

Founding suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton (left) and Susan B. Anthony met in 1851. In 1902, Anthony wrote to her friend, “We little dreamed...that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women.” (Courtesy National Portrait Gallery)

The suffrage movement began in the 1840s, when married women still had no right to property or ownership of their wages; women were shut out of most professions, and the domestic sphere was considered their rightful place. The idea of women casting ballots was so alien that even those who attended the landmark 1848 Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights found it hard to get their heads around it. The delegates unanimously passed resolutions favoring a woman’s right to her own wages, to divorce an abusive husband and to be represented in government. A resolution on suffrage passed, but with dissenters.

Twenty years later, just as the movement was gaining traction, the end of the Civil War created a new obstacle: racial division. Though many white suffragists had gotten their start in the abolition movement, now they were told that it was what the white abolitionist Wendell Phillips called the “Negro’s hour”: Women should stand aside and let black men proceed first to the polls. (Everyone treated black women as invisible, and white suffragists marginalized these allies to a shameful extent.) The 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote; differences among suffragists hobbled the movement for 40 years.

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Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) championed racial equality and women’s suffrage, saying she belonged to “the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount.” In 1912, the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs endorsed the suffrage movement two years before its white counterpart. (Courtesy of the Oberlin College Archives)

Journalist Ida B. Wells helped found the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and crusaded against lynching and other forms of oppression, including disenfranchisement. (Courtesy National Portrait Gallery)

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Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938), a member of the Lakota nation and an essayist and librettist, founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 to advocate for cultural recognition and citizenship rights for Native peoples. (Courtesy National Portrait Gallery)

Even after a new generation took up the cause, one faction favored incrementalism—winning the vote one state at a time—while another wanted a big national victory. In 1913, young radicals, led by Swarthmore graduate Alice Paul, kicked off a drive for a constitutional amendment with a parade down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue featuring more than 5,000 marchers as well as bands, floats and mounted brigades. Tens of thousands of spectators packed the streets, many of them men in town for Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration the next day.

“No one had ever claimed the street for a protest march like this one,” Rebecca Boggs Roberts writes in her book Suffragists in Washington, D.C.: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote. Spectators started hurling slurs and more at the marchers—scores ended up in the hospital—but the headline- making fracas played into the women’s desire for publicity.

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The suffrage parade in Washington received little police protection—the chief was no fan of the movement. Secretary of War Henry Stimson arranged for a Virginia National Guard presence, which proved foresighted when spectators began attacking marchers. (Courtesy Robert P.J. Conney Jr.)

Radical suffragists began picketing the White House by the hundreds, even in the freezing rain that attended Wilson’s second inauguration four years later—“a sight to impress even the jaded senses of one who has seen much,” wrote Scripps correspondent Gilson Gardner. As the pickets continued, women were arrested on charges like “obstructing sidewalk traffic.” Nearly 100 of them were taken to a workhouse in Occoquan, Virginia, or to the District of Columbia jail. When some of them went on a hunger strike, they were force-fed via a tube jammed into the nose. “Miss Paul vomits much. I do too,” wrote one, Rose Winslow. “We think of the coming feeding all day. It is horrible.”

Lucy Burns (1879-1966) was arrested and jailed six times for picketing on behalf of women’s suffrage. She was one of several women who went on hunger strikes at the Occoquan, Virginia, workhouse and endured force-feeding. (National Woman's Party, Washington, D.C.)

5 of 8 9/23/2020, 1:21 PM The Long Battle for Women's Suffrage | At the Smithsonian | Smithsoni... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-battle-w...

But on January 10, 1918, Jeannette Rankin, a Republican House member from Montana—the first woman elected to Congress—opened debate on the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which would prohibit states from discriminating against women when it came to voting. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it, and the 19th Amendment was promulgated on August 26.

Many histories of the suffragist movement end there—but so much more was still to come. Some states disenfranchised women—particularly black and immigrant women—by instituting poll taxes, literacy tests and onerous registration requirements. And many women didn’t yet see themselves as having a role, or a say, in the public sphere. People “don’t immediately change their sense of self,” says Christina Wolbrecht, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. “Women who came of political age before the 19th Amendment was ratified remained less likely to vote throughout their entire lives.” The debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which at first addressed only racial discrimination, included a key moment when Representative Howard Smith, a powerful Virginia Democrat, inserted “sex” into the bill in a way that led many to believe he was trying to tank it. The gesture backfired—and the bill passed. “Women get equality on paper because of a political stunt,” says Jennifer Lawless, Commonwealth professor of politics at the University of Virginia. In 1964, women outvoted men numerically—37.5 million men versus 39.2 million women—and the trend continued.

By the 1970s, as a result of feminism and the movement of more women into the workplace, women finally understood themselves to be autonomous political actors. And in 1980, the fabled gender gap emerged: For the first time, women voted in greater numbers and proportions than men, and began to form blocs that candidates ignored at their peril.

As a child, Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) picked cotton. As an adult, she was an educator and a fierce advocate for racial and gender equality, braving attacks during voter registration drives. (Courtesy State Archives of Florida)

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Left: Bilingual and bicultural, Susette La Flesche Tibbles witnessed the forced removal of the Ponca from Nebraska and testified in a landmark civil rights case that recognized Native Americans as people under the law. Right: Anna J. Cooper, a published author and educator, demonstrated radical ideas of inclusion and equality. In the early 1900s, she taught at the M Street Colored High School in Washington D.C., one of the few college preparatory schools that enrolled African-Americans. (Courtesy National Portrait Gallery / the Oberlin College Archives)

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Sarah Parker Remond was born free in Massachusetts and became an internationally known activist for human rights and women’s suffrage. She filed one of the earliest lawsuits protesting segregation in a Boston theater in 1853. (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., Gift of Miss Cecelia R. Babock)

Women’s representation in office remained tiny, though; to date, just 56 women have served in the Senate and 358 in Congress overall. But as of this writing, a record 131 women are serving in Congress, a woman wields the House speaker’s gavel, and five women have announced plans to run for president in 2020. True, the officeholders’ numbers skew strongly Democratic, and full parity for women will depend on the election of more female Republicans. And yet, something has changed, something real, says Walsh: “We’re in a new era of women’s engagement.”

8 of 8 9/23/2020, 1:21 PM Suffrage Timeline https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/programs/19th-a...

Suffrage Timeline

1848

The first women's rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York. There, 68 women and 32 men sign a Declaration of Sentiments, which modeled on the Declaration of Independence, outlines grievances and sets the agenda for the women's rights movement. A set of 12 resolutions is adopted calling for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women.

1849

The first National Women's Rights Convention takes place in Worcester, Massachusetts, attracting more than 1,000 participants. Frederick Douglass, Paulina Wright Davis, Abby Kelley Foster, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone and Sojourner Truth are in attendance.

1851

At a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers her now memorable speech, “Ain't I a woman?”

1861

The Civil War begins in the United States and women’s rights advocacy grinds to a halt until the war ends in 1865.

1866

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage. They petition Congress for “universal suffrage.”

1868

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” and that right may not be “denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States.”

1867

Senator S.C. Pomeroy of Kansas introduces a federal women’s suffrage amendment in Congress. It is rejected.

1868

The suffragists split into two organizations. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association. The primary goal of the organization is to achieve voting rights for women by means of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and others form the American Woman Suffrage Association, which focuses exclusively on gaining voting rights for women through the individual states.

1870

1 of 4 9/23/2020, 1:12 PM Suffrage Timeline https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/programs/19th-a... The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

1871

Victoria Woodhull addresses the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, arguing that women have the right to vote under the 14th Amendment. The committee rejects her argument.

1871

The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded. Many people, including prominent women, such as Ellen Sherman, wife of General William Tecumseh Sherman, challenged the notion of suffrage as a “natural right,” and opposed its extension to women. In their view, women’s political participation threatened their important roles as wives, mothers, educators, and philanthropists.

1872

Susan B. Anthony registers and votes for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election in New York. She is arrested, tried, and convicted in 1873. Her defense, that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment entitled her to vote, was not successful.

1874

The Supreme Court rules in Minor v. Happersett that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee women the right to vote. Citizenship does not give women voting rights, and women’s political rights are under individual states’ jurisdictions, the Court determines.

1876

Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupt the official U.S. Centennial program at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, presenting a “Declaration of Rights for Women.”

1877

California Senator A.A. Sargeant introduces the Woman Suffrage Amendment into Congress. It includes the language that would eventually become the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1890

The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. As the movement's mainstream organization, NAWSA wages state-by-state campaigns to obtain voting rights for women.

1896

The National Association of Colored Women is formed with the goal of achieving equality for women of color. The association brings together more than 100 black women's clubs. Leaders include Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Mary Church Terrell, and Anna Julia Cooper.

1911

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) is organized.

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Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party becomes the first national major political party to support women’s suffrage.

1913

Suffragists organize a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. Known as the Woman Suffrage Procession, it was the first public demonstration in the nation’s capital for women’s suffrage and called participants to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded.”

1913

Alice Paul and Lucy Burns form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage. Their focus is lobbying for a federal constitutional amendment to secure the national right to vote for women.

1915

Mabel Vernon and Sara Bard Field lead a transcontinental tour which gathers over 500,000 signatures on petitions to Congress in favor of women’s suffrage.

1916

Alice Paul and her colleagues rename the Congressional Union the National Woman's Party (NWP) and began introducing some of the methods used by the suffrage movement in Britain. Tactics include demonstrations, parades, mass meetings, and picketing the White House over the refusal of President Woodrow Wilson and other incumbent Democrats to actively support the Suffrage Amendment.

1916

Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Woodrow Wilson states that the Democratic Party platform will support suffrage.

1917

United States enters World War I

1917

Picketers are arrested on charges of “obstructing traffic,” during a demonstration. Alice Paul and others are convicted and incarcerated at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. While imprisoned, Alice Paul begins a hunger strike and is forcibly fed a mixture of eggs and milk for nutrition.

1918

In January, after much bad press about the treatment of Alice Paul and the other imprisoned women, and the country still at war in World War I, President Wilson announces that women's suffrage is urgently needed as a "war measure." World War I ends in November.

1919

The Woman Suffrage Amendment, originally written by Susan B. Anthony and introduced in

3 of 4 9/23/2020, 1:12 PM Suffrage Timeline https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/programs/19th-a... Congress in 1878, is passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is then sent to the states for ratification. Wisconsin and Illinois are the first states to ratify.

1920

The League of Women Voters forms

1920

After Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution is certified as law, guaranteeing that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

1920

Its work completed, the National American Woman Suffrage Association disbands.

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