The
Nineteenth Amendment (
Amendment XIX) to the
United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the
right to vote based on sex. It was
ratified on August 18, 1920.
The Constitution allows states to determine the qualifications for voting, and until the 1910s most states disenfranchised women. The amendment was the culmination of the
women's suffrage movement, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote.
Susan B. Anthony and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the amendment and first introduced it in 1878; it was forty-one years later, in 1919, when the Congress submitted the amendment to the states for ratification. A year later, it was ratified by the requisite number of states, with
Tennessee's ratification being the final vote needed to add the amendment to the Constitution.
The Nineteenth Amendment was unsuccessfully challenged in
Leser v. Garnett (1922). In that case, the
Supreme Court rejected claims that the amendment was unconstitutionally adopted
So again Why did they have to amend the constitution?