We have given this case the careful consideration its importance
demands. If the law is wrong it ought to be changed, but the
power for that is not with us. The arguments addressed to us
bearing upon such a view of the subject may perhaps be sufficient
to induce those having the power to make the alteration, but they
ought not to be permitted to influence our judgment in
determining the present rights of the parties now litigating
before us. No argument as to woman's need of suffrage can be
considered. We can only act upon her rights as they exist. It is
not for us to look at the hardship of withholding. Our duty is at
an end, if we find it is within the power of a State to withhold.

Being unanimously of the opinion that the Constitution of the
United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one,
and that the Constitutions and laws of the several States which
commit that important trust to men alone are not necessarily
void, we affirm the judgment of the court below.

Soon after the decision on Mrs. Minor's case, Mrs. Gage, in a
convention at Washington, ably reviewed Judge Waite's opinion, showing
that the United States has eight classes of voters. She said:

Chief justice Waite, in rendering the opinion of the Supreme
Court of the United States, in the Minor _vs._ Happersett case,
which was an appeal from the Supreme Court of Missouri, on the
question of woman's right to vote under the provisions of the
XIV. Amendment, decided against this right. The court maintained
that the United States Constitution does not confer the right of
suffrage on any person, and that the matter is regulated by
State Constitutions, and that when provision is made in them
extending the right of suffrage to men only, such provisions are
binding. It also declared that the United States had no voters in
the States of its own creation. But this assertion was false upon
the very face of it.

1st. Every enfranchised male slave had the ballot secured him
under United States law--a law which annulled all State
provisions against color. At the time of ratification of the last
amendments, the State of New York possessed a property
qualification of $250. The moment these amendments were ratified,
that law became dead on the statute book. The New York
Legislature did