Under the Immigration Act of 1924, all Asian immigrants were considered “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” As a result, Asian American women who married Asian men did not only lose their citizenship, but also became ineligible to reapply for it. Yet, American women still lost their citizenship if they married men who were ineligible for citizenship. Under the Cable Act, white and Black American women who married white or Black foreign men could reapply for naturalization. The League lobbied for the Cable Act, or Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act, which partially repealed the Expatriation Act in 1922. The press helped Mackenzie to rally support for married women’s independent citizenship among women’s suffragists.Īfter the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the League of Women Voters sought to help women regain their citizenship and voting rights. They also repeated attorneys’ claims that the case would be as significant as the pre-Civil War decision Dred Scott v. Reporters portrayed Mackenzie as an advocate for American women. Hare gained significant attention from local and national newspapers. Independent Citizenship and Women’s Suffrage Furthermore, Mackenzie’s decision to marry her husband was equivalent to “voluntary expatriation.”ĭespite her frustration with the decision, Mackenzie urged her husband to naturalize, so that she could regain her citizenship and right to vote in state elections. The Court viewed a married couple as a legal entity represented by the husband. But in 1915, the Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts that the Expatriation Act was constitutional. When the California courts rejected Mackenzie’s argument, she took her case the Supreme Court of the United States. Mackenzie argued that her citizenship “became a right, privilege, and immunity which could not be taken away from her except as a punishment for crime or by voluntary expatriation.” She based her argument on the Fourteenth Amendment’s natural-born citizen clause, which states that anyone who is born in the U.S. Hare et al., Board of Election of San FranciscoĮthel Mackenzie sued San Francisco’s Election Commissioners to register as a voter. Although Mackenzie Gordon had lived in the United States for many years, he had not applied for citizenship. Under the Expatriation Act, Ethel Mackenzie could only regain her rights if her husband chose to naturalize. Women's rights activists had criticized it for decades. Coverture had also prevented married women from owning property and entering into contracts. Under coverture, courts considered a husband and wife to be one legal "person." As a result, they could not be citizens of two different states. The Expatriation Act was based on coverture, a common law precedent from the Middle Ages that linked a woman’s legal status to her husband. Furthermore, non-citizen wives took on the nationality of their American husbands. On the other hand, American men could marry non-citizen women without losing their U.S. citizen took on the nationality of her husband, and consequently lost her citizenship. Under this law, any American woman who married a man who was not a U.S. Local election officials rejected her application due to her marriage to a “foreign alien.” They based their decision on the Expatriation Act of 1907. The Expatriation ActĪfter the referendum passed, Mackenzie tried to register to vote in January 1913. She joined the Club Woman’s Franchise League around 1911, the same year that Californians narrowly approved women's suffrage. While living in San Francisco, Ethel Coope Mackenzie became involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. The couple had one child, Mackenzie Gordon, Jr. On August 14, 1909, she married Mackenzie Gordon, a professional singer from Scotland and member of San Francisco’s elite Bohemian Club and Family Club. Their efforts led to the creation of Big Basin Redwoods State Park.Įthel grew up in San Francisco and studied music. During the early 1900s, many wealthy, white Californians supported the conservation of the redwoods, including women in the California Club. Coope was also a member of the Sempervirens Club, in which he and other wealthy, white men worked to “Save the Redwoods” and other natural resources. and Bertha Coope were wealthy, white landowners in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. What does it mean to belong to a country?Įthel Coope was born in Woodside, California on March 12, 1885. In 1915, Mackenzie's challenge to the law went to the Supreme Court. When she tried to register to vote, officials turned her away. Under a 1907 law called the Expatriation Act, American women lost their own citizenship if they married men who were not U.S. Mackenzie was a white suffragist from California who married a Scottish national.
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