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26 Long before Title VII was adopted, many pioneering state and federal laws had used language substantively indistinguishable from Title VII’s critical phrase, “discrimination because of sex.” For example, the California Constitution of 1879 stipulated that no one, “on account of sex, [could] be disqualified from entering upon or pursuing any lawful business, vocation, or profession.” Art. XX, §18 (emphasis added). It also prohibited a student’s exclusion from any state university department “on account of sex.” Art. IX, §9; accord, Mont. Const., Art. XI, §9 (1889).

Wyoming’s first Constitution proclaimed broadly that “[b]oth male and female citizens of this state shall equally enjoy all civil, political and religious rights and privileges,” Art. VI, §1 (1890), and then provided specifically that “[I]n none of the public schools ... shall distinction or discrimination be made on account of sex,” Art. VII, §10 (emphasis added); see also §16 (the “university shall be equally open to students of both sexes”). Washington’s Constitution likewise required “ample provision for the education of all children ... without distinction or preference on account of ... sex.” Art. IX, §1 (1889) (emphasis added).

The Constitution of Utah, adopted in 1895, provided that the right to vote and hold public office “shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.” Art. IV, §1 (emphasis added). And in the next sentence it made clear what “on account of sex” meant, stating that “[b]oth male and female citizens ... shall enjoy equally all civil, political and religious rights and privileges.” Ibid.

The most prominent example of a provision using this language was the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, which bans the denial or abridgment of the right to vote “on account of sex.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 19. Similar language appeared in the proposal of the National Woman’s Party for an Equal Rights Amendment. As framed in 1921, this proposal forbade all “political, civil or legal disabilities or inequalities on account of sex, [o]r on account of marriage.”