Subject:
Women are not "natural born Citizens" of the United States
From:
"Gordon Epperly" <[email protected]>
Sent:
9/1/2016 3:24:05 PM
To:
CC:
[email protected];[email protected];josie.bahnke@alaska
Attachments: Women in US Constitutional History.pdf
An Open Letter
Hello Everyone
Most of you have seen my past e-mails that question the "Office Qualifications" of Hillary
Clinton to be a Candidate for the Office of President of The United States of America. It is
my view that the women of our Nation of The United States of America are not "natural born
Citizens," a constitutional requirement for the President (U.S. Const., Art. II, Sec. 1, Cl. 5)
and Vice-President (U.S. Const., Amend. XII) of the United States.
It past messages, I laid out the reasons why women are in want of having the status of a
"natural born Citizen," but I am afraid with the generation of today not being educated in the
lives of early day citizens of our Nation, the people of today’s generation are mistakenly in
belief that women are "on par" with the "Political Rights" of "white men" including the
"Political Rights" to the Office of President of The United States of America.
Here I must remind everyone that "Constitutions" are not "Statutory Laws" and as such, their
meaning and intent don't change over the years (living documents). They are "fixed"
documents and the understanding of the "words and phrases" as used in "Constitutions" are
the same today as the day those "Constitutions" were written.
I have attached a PDF Document to this message that addresses the rights of women as
exercised from the early days of our U.S. Constitution to the present day. This document of
"Women in U.S. Constitutional History" is further documentation that shows that women are
not "natural born Citizens" of the United States and as such, Hillary Clinton is in want of
"Office Qualifications" to be a Candidate for the Office of President of the United States.
I am sure the "Director of Elections" for the State of Alaska will be in compliance with the
U.S. Constitution and will give "Notice" that the name of "Hillary Rodham Clinton" will not be
appearing on the "Election Ballots" of the State of Alaska.
As the former "Director of Elections" (on guidance of the Office of the Alaska Attorney
General) has declared that there are no procedures in place to question "Office Qualifications"
of Candidates for the "Office of President" of the United States, I would like to encourage the
"Director of Elections" to issue forth a determination on her own cognizance of the issue. I
hope there will be no need for a "Court Order" from the Superior Court for the State of Alaska
to resolve this matter.
Respectfully Submitted
Gordon Warren Epperly
P.O. Box 34358
Juneau, Alaska 99803
Tel: (907) 789-5659
Women in U.S. Constitutional
History:Sex Discrimination
Women's Equality Under Federal Law
By Jone Johnson Lewis
Women's History Expert
US Supreme Court Building
The United States Constitution did not mention women or limit any of its rights or privileges
to males. The word "persons" was used, which sounds gender neutral. However, common law,
inherited from British precedents, informed the interpretation of the law. And many state laws
were not gender-neutral. While right after the Constitution was adopted, New Jersey accepted
voting rights for women, even those had been lost by a bill in 1807 that rescinded the right
of both women and black men to vote in that state.
The principle of coverture prevailed at the time the Constitution was written and adopted:
a married woman was simply not a person under the law; her legal existence was bound up with
that of her husband's.
Dower rights, meant to protect a widow's income during her lifetime, were already being
ignored increasingly, and so women were in the tough position of not having significant rights
to own property, while the convention of dower that had protected them under that system
was collapsing.
Beginning in the 1840s, women's rights advocates began working to establish legal and
political equality for women in some of the states. Property rights of women were among
the first targets. But these did not affect the federal constitutional rights of women. Not yet.
1868: Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
The first major constitutional change to affect women's rights was the Fourteenth Amendment.
This amendment was designed to overturn the Dred Scott decision, which found that
black people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect," and to clarify other
citizenship rights after the American Civil War had ended. The primary effect was to ensure that
freed slaves and other African Americans had full citizenship rights.
But the amendment also included the word "male" in connection with voting, and
the women's rights movement split over whether to support the amendment because
it established racial equality in voting, or oppose it because it was the first explicit federal denial
that women had voting rights.

Women's Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment
1873: Bradwell v. Illinois
Myra Bradwell claimed the right to practice law as part of the 14th Amendment's protections.
The Supreme Court found that the right to choose one's profession was not a protected right,
and that women's "paramount destiny and mission" was the "offices of wife and mother."
Women could be legally excluded from the practice of law, the Supreme Court found,
using a separate spheres argument.

Myra Bradwell's Case
1875: Minor v. Happerset
The suffrage movement decided to use the Fourteenth Amendment, even with that mention
of "male," to justify women voting. A number of women in 1872 attempted to vote in
a federal election; Susan B. Anthony was arrested and convicted for doing so. A Missouri
woman, Virginia Minor, also challenged the law. The registrar's action forbidding her from
voting was the basis for yet another case to reach the Supreme Court. (Her husband had to file
the lawsuit, as coverture laws forbid her as a married woman from filing on her own behalf.)
In their decision, the Court found that while women were indeed citizens, voting was not one
of the "privileges and immunities of citizenship" and thus states could deny women the right
to vote.

Minor v. Happerset
1894: In re Lockwood
Belva Lockwood filed a lawsuit to force Virginia to allow her to practice law. She was already
a member of the bar in the District of Columbia. But the Supreme Court found that it was
acceptable to read the word "citizens" in the 14th Amendment to include only male citizens.
1903: Muller v. Oregon
Thwarted in legal cases claiming women's full equality as citizens, women's rights and labor
rights workers filed the “Brandeis Brief” in the case of Muller v. Oregon. The claim was that
women's special status as wives and mothers, especially as mothers, required that they be given
special protection as workers. The Supreme Court had been reluctant to allow legislatures
to interfere with contract rights of employers by permitting limits on hours or minimum wage
requirements; however, in this case, the Supreme Court looked at evidence of working
conditions and permit special protections for women in the workplace.
Louis Brandeis, himself later appointed to the Supreme Court, was the lawyer for the case
promoting protective legislation for women; the “Brandeis Brief” was prepared primarily by his
sister-in-law Josephine Goldmark and by reformer Florence Kelley.
1920: Nineteenth Amendment
Women were granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1919 and
ratified by enough states in 1920 to take effect.
1923: Adkins v. Children's Hospital
In 1923, the Supreme Court decided that federal minimum wage legislation applying to women
infringed on the liberty of contract and thus on the Fifth Amendment. Muller v. Oregon was not
overturned, however.
1923: Equal Rights Amendment
Alice Paul wrote a proposed amendment to the Constitution to require equal rights for men and
women. She named the proposed amendment for suffrage pioneer Lucretia Mott. When she
reworded the amendment in the 1940s, it came to be called the “Alice Paul Amendment.” It did
not pass the Congress until 1972.

Equal Rights Amendment
1938: West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish
This decision by the Supreme Court, overturning Adkins v. Children's Hospital, upheld
Washington State's minimum wage legislation, opening the door again for protective labor
legislation applying to women or men.
1948: Goesaert v. Cleary
In this case, the Supreme Court found valid a state statute prohibiting most women (other than
wives of daughters of male tavern keepers) from serving or selling liquor.
1961: Hoyt v. Florida
The Supreme Court heard this case challenging a conviction on the basis that the female
defendant faced an all-male jury because jury duty was not mandatory for women.
The Supreme Court denied that the state statute exempting women from jury duty
was discriminatory, finding that women needed protection from the atmosphere of the courtroom
and that it was reasonable to assume that women were needed in the home.
1971: Reed v. Reed
In Reed v. Reed, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case where state law preferred males
to females as administrators of an estate. In this case, unlike many earlier cases, the Court held
that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause applied to women equally.

Reed v. Reed
1972: Equal Rights Amendment Passes Congress
In 1972, the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, sending it to the states.
The Congress appended a requirement that the amendment be ratified within seven years,
later extended to 1982, but only 35 instead of the requisite states ratified it during that period.
Some legal scholars challenge the deadline, and by that assessment, the ERA is still alive to
be ratified by three more states.

The "New" Equal Rights Amendment of 1972
1973: Frontiero v. Richardson
In the case of Frontiero v. Richardson, the Supreme Court found that the military could not have
different criteria for male spouses of military members in deciding eligibility for benefits,
violating the Fifth Amendment's Due Process clause. The court also signaled that it would
be using more scrutiny in the future in looking at sex distinctions in the law -- not quite
strict scrutiny, which did not get a majority support among the justices in the case.

Frontiero v. Richardson
1974: Geduldig v. Aiello
Geduldig v. Aiello looked at a state's disability insurance system which excluded temporary
absences from work due to pregnancy disability, and found that normal pregnancies did not have
to be covered by the system.

Geduldig v. Aiello
1975: Stanton v. Stanton
In this case, the Supreme Court threw out distinctions in the age at which girls and boys were
entitled to child support.
1976: Planned Parenthood v. Danforth
The Supreme Court found that spousal consent laws (in this case, in the third trimester)
were unconstitutional, because the pregnant woman's rights were more compelling than
her husband's. The Court did uphold that regulations requiring the woman's full and informed
consent were constitutional.
1976: Craig v. Boren
In Craig v. Boren, the court threw out a law which treated men and women differently in setting
a drinking age. The case is also noted for setting out the new standard of judicial review in cases
involving sex discrimination, intermediate scrutiny.

Craig v. Boren
1979: Orr v. Orr
In Orr v. Orr, the Court held that alimony laws applied equally to women and men, and that
the means of the partner were to be considered, not merely their sex.
Property Rights of Women
A Short History
By Jone Johnson Lewis
Women's History Expert
Portrait of Ernestine Rose
Property rights include the legal rights to acquire, own, sell and transfer property, collect and
keep rents, keep one's wages, make contracts and bring lawsuits.
In history, a woman's property has often, but not always, been under the control of her father or,
if she was married, her husband.
Women's Property Rights in the United States
In colonial times, law generally followed that of the mother country, England (or in some parts
of what later became the United States, France or Spain).
In the early years of the United States, following British law, women's property was under
control of their husbands, with states gradually giving women limited property rights.
By 1900 every state had given married women substantial control over their property.
See also: dower, coverture, dowry, curtesy
Some changes in laws affecting American women's property rights:
New York, 1771: Act to Confirm Certain Conveyances and Directing the Manner of Proving
Deeds to Be Recorded: required a married man to have his wife's signature on any deed to her
property before he sold or transferred it, and required that a judge meet privately with the wife
to confirm her approval.
Maryland, 1774: required a private interview between a judge and a married woman to confirm
her approval of any trade or sale by her husband of her property.
(1782: Flannagan's Lessee v. Young used this change to invalidate a property transfer)
Massachusetts, 1787: a law was passed which allowed married women in limited circumstances
to act as femme sole traders.
Connecticut, 1809: law passed permitting married women to execute wills
Various courts in colonial and early America: enforced provisions of prenuptial and marriage
agreements placing her "separate estate" in a trust managed by a man other than her husband.
Mississippi, 1839: law passed giving a woman very limited property rights, largely in
connection with slaves.
New York, 1848: Married Women's Property Act, a more extensive expansion of property rights
of married women, used as a model for many other states 1848-1895.
New York, 1860: Act Concerning the Rights and Liabilities of Husband and Wife: expanded
married women's property rights.
Women's Rights and the
Fourteenth Amendment
Controversy Over the Equal Protection Clause
By Jone Johnson Lewis
Women's History Expert
Draft of the 14th Amendment
Beginnings: Adding "Male" to the Constitution
After the American Civil War, several legal challenges faced the newly-reunited nation.
One was how to define a citizen so that former slaves, and other African Americans,
were included. (The Dred Scott decision, before the Civil War, had declared that black people
"had no rights which the white man was bound to respect....") The citizenship rights of those
who had rebelled against the federal government or who had participated in secession were also
in question.
One response was the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, proposed
on June 13, 1866, and ratified July 28, 1868.
During the Civil War, the developing women's rights movement had largely put their agenda
on hold, with most of the women's rights advocates supporting the Union efforts. Many of
the women's rights advocates had been abolitionists as well, and so they eagerly supported
the war which they believed would end slavery.
When the Civil War ended, women's rights advocates expected to take up their cause once again,
joined by the male abolitionists whose cause had been won. But when
the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed, the women's rights movement split over whether
to support it as a means of finishing the job of establishing full citizenship for the freed slaves
and other African Americans.
Why was the Fourteenth Amendment controversial in women's rights circles? Because, for the
first time, the proposed Amendment added the word "male" into the U.S. Constitution, Section 2,
which dealt explicitly with voting rights, used the term "male." And women's rights advocates,
especially those who were promoting woman suffrage or the granting of the vote to women,
were outraged.
Some women's rights supporters, including Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe,
and Frederick Douglass, supported the Fourteenth Amendment as essential to guaranteeing
black equality and full citizenship, even though it was flawed in only applying voting rights
to males. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the efforts of some
women's suffrage supporters to try to defeat both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,
because the Fourteenth Amendment included the offensive focus on male voters.
When the Amendment was ratified, they advocated, without success, for a universal
suffrage amendment.
Each side of this controversy saw the others as betraying basic principles of equality:
supporters of the 14th Amendment saw the opponents as betraying efforts for racial equality,
and opponents saw the supporters as betraying efforts for the equality of the sexes.
Stone and Howe founded the American Woman Suffrage Association and a paper,
the Woman's Journal. Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association
and began publishing the Revolution.
The rift would not be healed until, in the late years of the 19th century, the two organizations
merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Women's Rights and
the Fourteenth Amendment
- Voting Rights?
Minor v. Happerset, U.S. v. Susan B. Anthony
By Jone Johnson Lewis
Women's History Expert
Virginia Minor.
While the second article of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specified certain
voting rights connected with males only, women's rights advocates decided that the first article
could be used instead to support the full citizenship rights of women.
In a strategy carried out by the more radical wing of the movement, led by Susan B. Anthony
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, woman suffrage supporters attempted to cast ballots in 1872.
Susan B. Anthony was among those who did so; she was arrested and convicted for this action.
Another woman, Virginia Minor, was turned away from the St. Louis polls when she tried
to vote -- and her husband, Frances Minor, sued Reese Happersett, the registrar.
(Under "femme covert" presumptions in the law, Virginia Minor could not sue in her own right.)
The “Minors' Brief” argued that "There can be no half-way citizenship. Woman, as a citizen in
the United States, is entitled to all the benefits of that position, and liable to all its obligations,
or to none."
In a unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett found that
women born or naturalized in the United States were indeed American citizens (but never
declared women to be “natural born Citizens”), and that they always had been even before
the Fourteenth Amendment. But, the Supreme Court also found, voting was not one of
the "privileges and immunities of citizenship" and therefore States need not grant voting rights
or suffrage to women.
Once again, the Fourteenth Amendment was used to try to ground arguments
for women's equality and the right as citizens to vote and hold office -- but the courts
did not agree.
Women's Rights and
the Fourteenth Amendment
- Finally Applied
Reed v. Reed and Roe v. Wade
By Jone Johnson Lewis
Women's History Expert
Equality?
Reed v. Reed
In 1971, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Reed v. Reed. Sally Reed had sued
when Idaho law presumed that her estranged husband should be automatically selected as
executor of the estate of their son, who had died without naming an executor. The Idaho law
stated that "males must be preferred to females" in choosing estate administrators.
The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Warren E.
Burger, decided that the Fourteenth Amendment did prohibit such unequal treatment on the basis
of sex -- the first US Supreme Court decision to apply the Fourteenth Amendment's equal
protection clause to gender or sexual distinctions. Later cases have refined the application of the
Fourteenth Amendment to sex discrimination, but it was more than 100 years after passage of the
Fourteenth Amendment before it was applied to women's rights.
Roe v. Wade
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Roe v. Wade that the Fourteenth Amendment
restricted, on the basis of the Due Process clause, the government's ability to restrict
or prohibit abortions. Any criminal abortion statute that did not take into account the stage
of pregnancy and other interests than merely the life of the mother was deemed to be a violation
of due process.
Women's Rights and
the Equal Protection Clause
Text of the Fourteenth Amendment
By Jone Johnson Lewis
Women's History Expert
Draft of the 14th Amendment.
The entire text of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
proposed on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 28, 1868, is as follows:
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein
they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according
to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State,
excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice
of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives
in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of
the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State,
being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged,
except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein
shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear
to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector
of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under
the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member
of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature,
or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of
the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,
or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds
of each House, remove such disability.
Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,
including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing
insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor
any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection
or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of
any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation,
the provisions of this article.
Text of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
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 race, color,
or previous condition of servitude.
Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article
by appropriate legislation.