Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Nineteenth Amendment was constitutional.

Prior history

Two months before, on August 26, 1920, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby.

Case

The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide "Whether the Nineteenth Amendment has become part of the US Constitution." The plaintiffs disputed the constitutionality of the amendment through three claims: In a unanimous decision, written by Justice Louis Brandeis, the court addressed each objection in turn. In response to the first objection, the court declared that since the Fifteenth Amendment had been accepted as valid for more than fifty years, and dealt with a similar matter (in this case, that voting rights could not be denied on account of race), it could not be argued that the new amendment was invalid due to its subject matter. In response to the second objection, the court decided that when the state legislatures ratified the amendment, they were operating in a federal capacity as laid down in the Constitution, a role which "transcends any limitations sought to be imposed by the people of a state." As far as the ratifications of Tennessee and West Virginia were concerned, the court remarked that the additional ratifications of Connecticut and Vermont after the proclamation of the amendment rendered the point moot, but the court also addressed the substance of the objection. The court found that as the Secretary of State had accepted the ratifications by the legislatures of the two states as valid, they were valid, effectively ruling the matter as non-justiciable.