February 26, 1922

Leser v. Garnett

Supreme Court rejects the Leser challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment

A nationwide constitutional attack on women's suffrage began with two names on one Baltimore voting list — one woman white, the other Black.

Decided on the 27th, not the 26th

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, on 27 February 1922. The official United States Reports records that date; the listing's 26 February is wrong.

The case affirmed a Maryland judgment rejecting an attempt to strike two women from Baltimore's voter register: Cecelia Streett Waters, who was white, and Mary D. Randolph, who was Black. Both had registered on 12 October 1920.

Oscar Leser, acting for himself and the Maryland League for State Defense, brought the challenge because Maryland's constitution limited suffrage to men and the state had refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

Three arguments, three answers

Justice Louis Brandeis rejected the claim that an amendment expanding a state's electorate without that state's consent exceeded Article V, reasoning that the objection applied equally to the already accepted Fifteenth Amendment.

He rejected the contention that state constitutional restrictions disabled state legislatures from ratifying, holding that ratification is a federal function derived from the U.S. Constitution.

On objections to the procedures used in Tennessee and West Virginia, the Court held that authenticated legislative notices were conclusive on the Secretary of State and, after his proclamation, conclusive on the courts.

What the ruling reached, and did not

The Court dismissed the writ of error, granted the separately filed petition for certiorari, and affirmed the Maryland Court of Appeals. Waters and Randolph stayed on the register.

It did not treat the Tennessee and West Virginia questions as moot or non-justiciable. Brandeis wrote only that the later ratifications by Connecticut and Vermont may have made them immaterial, and then decided the broader issue.

Nor did the judgment secure the vote on the same terms as men across the country: it barred sex-based exclusion under the Nineteenth Amendment while leaving racial disenfranchisement, citizenship exclusions, poll taxes and literacy tests in place.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date corrected

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Date corrected. The research places this at 1922-02-27.