

On the same day, the Court also decided a companion case, Leser v. In February, the Court announced a unanimous decision authored by Associate Justice Louis Brandeis, concluding that Fairchild, as a private citizen, lacked standing to challenge the amendment's ratification under the limitations of the Case or Controversy Clause of Article III. Opinion of the Court Louis Brandeis penned the Court's opinion. In November 1921, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which was argued in January 1922.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court decision. On August 26, Hughes acknowledged Tennessee's ratification, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution became law. The district court dismissed the case on July 20, and Fairchild appealed to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. The challenge sought to prevent Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes from officially declaring the Amendment valid. Fairchild challenged the validity of the ratification process for that Amendment in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.

Fairchild challenged the validity of what was to become the 19th Amendment. In 1919, the United States Congress proposed a Constitutional amendment reading: "Section 1: 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." "Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." By July 1920, thirty-five states had ratified the proposal, with only one additional state needed for the Amendment to be adopted.Ĭharles S. 126 (1922), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a general citizen, in a state that already had women's suffrage, lacked standing to challenge the validity of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Taft Associate Justices Joseph McKenna Ĭase or Controversy Clause, U.S.
