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The Pros And Cons Of The Nineteenth Amendment

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Not everyone in the United States agreed with the Nineteenth Amendment being passed. Two months after the Federal Government declared that the Amendment had been incorporated to the Constitution in August of 1920, Oscar Lesser “sued to stop two women [Cecilia Street Waters and Mary D. Randolph] to vote in Baltimore, Maryland. Lesser “believed the Maryland Constitution limited the suffrage to men”. He said that Maryland had refused to vote regarding the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and should not be subject to its application.. In 1922, Leser v. Garnett, was argued before the United States Supreme Court. The plaintiffs of the case argued that the Nineteenth Amendment was not passed constitutionally. They claimed there were “three principal grounds” to their argument, which were: that the power to amend the Constitution did not cover this amendment "because of its character"; that several states that had ratified the amendment despite the fact that their state constitutions prohibited women from voting; and that, in particular, the ratifications of the states of Tennessee and West Virginia were were invalid because they were adopted without following the rules of legislative procedure in place in those states”. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that the amendment was passed constitutionally. In their decision, the court responded to each of the three arguments. Lesser’s first argument claimed that if Amendment’s are added without the State’s consent, it

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