Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/692

 merly the Men's Anti-Suffrage Association of New York, insti tuted injunction proceedings in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia against Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. They sought to restrain the Secretary from proclaiming the Federal Suffrage Amendment when it should receive the final ratification and the Attorney General from doing anything to enforce it. On July 13 the case for the Government was argued by Solicitor General William L Frierson and Assistant U. S. District Attorney James B. Archer. Mr. Fairchild and the league were represented by Everett P. Wheeler, a New York attorney and officer of the league. He contended that under the U. S. Constitution Congress had no power to submit the amendment and that various ratifications were illegal. Justice Thomas J. Bailey dismissed the injunction proceedings on the ground that neither Mr. Fairchild nor the league had sufficient interest to entitle them to ask for an injunction and that the court had no authority to go behind the action of the Legislatures in voting for ratification. The case was taken to the District Court of Appeals. On October 4 this court denied the injunction and dismissed the case as "frivolous and brought for delay." It was then carried to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Litigation was threatened in Tennessee. In Maryland a League for State Defense was formed to defeat ratification. It succeeded in the Maryland Legislature and had delegations of legislators sent to Tennessee and West Virginia for the purpose, who were not successful. On Oct. 30, 1920, this league brought a test case in the Court of Common Pleas in Baltimore through Attorney William L. Marbury against J. Mercer Garnett et al., constituting the Board of Registry, to compel them to strike the names of two women from the registration books. The suit was filed in the name of Oscar Leser, a former Judge, who had long fought woman suffrage, and twenty members of the league, on the following grounds: The alleged 19th Amendment is not authorized by Article V of the U. S. Constitution; it was never legally ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States; (those of West Virginia, Tennessee and Missouri were cited); it was rejected by the Maryland Legislature. Everett P. Wheeler