women on juries

[eub]

I was reading a novel last night in which someone said "if it ever comes to pass that women serve on juries", and I asked katybeth if she knew when that was, in the U.S. Same time as voting, per state? She found a few articles, which I'm going to try to re-find. Short version: actually, a lot later than 1920, I had no idea.

In Washington:
1883 - women voting and on juries in Washington Territory.
1887 - both rights abrogated by state court.
1888 - voting right, but not jury, restored by state legistature.

Informative Women Lawyers' Journal article says that a number of states did tie jury service to voting, so:
1914 - women get the vote, and jury service, in Nevada.
1918 - ditto Michigan.
1920 - ditto DE, IN, IA, KY, OH, PA, with the 19th Amendment.
But also a number of states ended jury exclusion separately (not sure in all cases whether before or after the right to vote):
1911 - Washington
1912 - Kansas
1917 - California
1921 - AR, LA, ME, MI, NJ, ND, OR, WI.
1927 - D.C. At this time "In Utah women are eligible jurors but are exempt and hence not called for service."

Time passes.

1949 - women allowed on Florida juries.
1950 - Massachusetts: "the thirty-ninth state to make women eligible for jury service, one of twenty-eight states that allowed women an exemption based on gender, and the only state to include a specific provision designed to protect women from potentially embarrassing testimony." [www]
1953 - Georgia. [www]
1966 - Alabama, the last state to allow women on juries. [NPR quiz incl. noxious Javascript resize]

Being allowed on juries didn't mean equal service, and I don't mean to single out Florida here because it sounds like a lot of states had problems:

1961 - Florida system where men all serve but women have to opt in is allowed (unanimously) by the Supreme Court. "[W]oman is still regarded as the center of home and family life". [www]
1975 - Supreme Court "effectively overrules" 1961 decision. [www]
1979 - Supreme Court disallows automatic exemption (presumably we're talking voluntary by this point?) for women.
1994 - Supreme Court rules that women can't be systematically excluded from a jury through peremptory challenge. [www]

What are we still missing?

Also: Ritter, "Jury Service and Women's Citizenship before and after the Nineteenth Amendment"

Comments

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Women got the vote in 1888 in WA? This surprises me for two reasons: (1) that it's so far earlier than most other places. (2) WA was already a state by then?

[katybeth]

Washington got statehood in 1889.

[eub.livejournal.com]

My impression is that the Western states / territories often had women voting from early on, and that WA may not have been unusual among them.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

The lobby of Seattle's new federal courthouse features a mural by artist Michael Fajans that portrays 12 citizens from various walks of life.1 These 12 randomly chosen adults — including a bus driver, an architect, a musician, a construction worker, and a computer programmer — represent a jury. Five of the jurors are women. To contemporary eyes, the presence of women on a jury is entirely unremarkable. A jury with no women would be anomalous, or even suspicious.

From 1883 to 1887, women in the Washington Territory served as jurors just as they do today. But unlike today, their presence was a source of great legal and social contention. Critics claimed that allowing women to serve as public decision-makers in the state's courts was a misguided experiment that violated the laws of nature, and would lead to dire consequences for family and society. A backlash followed that removed women from juries. If a mural of the ideal jury had been commissioned any time during Washington's first 20 years of statehood, it would have contained only men.

[emphasis mine]

I daresay it wouldn't have included any programmers either. My, how attitudes have changed since the late 19th century...

[mh75.livejournal.com]

I am constantly astounded at how recently some of these equal rights /duties came into force. My own grandparents and parents operated under drastically different assumptions than i do. (And all the more power to them for bringing us up to see a better world.)