A Self-Executing Amendment

Chapter 4 examines the state cases that were brought, after ratification, around the validity of voter petitions and elections in which women voted and around preconditions to voting, like poll taxes. Those cases gave state courts a forum to discuss the self-executing nature of the Nineteenth Amendment, in terms of its impact on existing state law. The general conclusion was that the Nineteenth Amendment was self-executing as to voting itself. But state differences in statutory and constitutional construction yielded mixed results, in terms of its actual impact on state laws around voter eligibility, including the requirement that women pay poll taxes. These cases demonstrate the broad discretion in state court judges regarding what was encompassed within “voting” as a matter of constitutional interpretation and statutory construction.