Which amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote?

The Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the constitutional right to vote in the United States.

Congress passed the amendment on June 4, 1919, and Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify it on August 18, 1920. It was certified on August 26, 1920. The amendment prohibits the federal government and the states from denying or abridging voting rights on account of sex.

The amendment followed decades of activism by figures including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, and Carrie Chapman Catt. The movement was not uniform: Black women and other women of color often faced racial discrimination, intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers even after ratification.

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited racial discrimination in voting but did not guarantee women’s suffrage. The Nineteenth Amendment therefore marked a major constitutional change, while not ending every practical obstacle to voting for all American women.