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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that shines a light on the ups and downs

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Speaker 1: of everyday history. I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode,

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Speaker 1: we're examining a little known law from the early twentieth

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Speaker 1: century that stripped American born women of their fundamental rights,

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Speaker 1: often without them even knowing. The day was December sixth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, the US Supreme Court upheld of federal law

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Speaker 1: revoking the citizenship of American women who married non citizens.

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Speaker 1: The plaintiff in the case, Ethel Mackenzie, was a prominent

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Speaker 1: socialite and suffragist who had helped win the right to

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Speaker 1: vote in California four years earlier, But when she went

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Speaker 1: to cast her ballot in the state's next election, she

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Speaker 1: was turned away and told she was no longer an

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Speaker 1: American under the Expatriation Act of nineteen oh seven. Ethel

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Speaker 1: had automatically lost her citizenship when she married a Scottish

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Speaker 1: immigrant in nineteen oh nine, but since the law wasn't

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Speaker 1: widely known, and since no one had bothered to notify her,

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Speaker 1: she didn't realize what had happened until the day she

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Speaker 1: tried to vote. After her rude awakening, Ethel Mackenzie challenged

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Speaker 1: the law in court, arguing that it stripped her of

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Speaker 1: her Fourteenth Amendment rights. The case went all the way

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Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court, but on December sixth, nineteen fifteen,

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Speaker 1: the nine male justices upheld the law in a unanimous decision.

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Speaker 1: The Expatriation Act was based on coverture, a common law

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Speaker 1: practice dating back to the Middle Ages that bound a

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Speaker 1: woman's legal existence to her spouse. Under coverture, a woman

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Speaker 1: ceased to be a distinct legal person when she got married.

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Speaker 1: Her legal status became completely dependent in subordinate to that

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Speaker 1: of her husband, which meant she couldn't own property or

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Speaker 1: enter a contract on her own. Coverture also prevented married

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Speaker 1: couples from being citizens of two different countries, because again,

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Speaker 1: they were a single legal entity in the eyes of

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Speaker 1: the law. The Expatriation Act, passed by Congress, followed the

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Speaker 1: same principle. It decreed that quote, any American woman who

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Speaker 1: marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband.

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Speaker 1: And as you could probably guess, the law didn't work

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Speaker 1: both ways. American men who married foreign women were allowed

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Speaker 1: to keep their citizenship. There were two paths by which

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Speaker 1: a woman could regain her legal rights. The first was

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Speaker 1: if her immigrant husband became a naturalized citizen himself after

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Speaker 1: their marriage. In that case, the woman's legal status would

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Speaker 1: be restored, ironically enough, through the same man with whom

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Speaker 1: she lost it in the first place. The other option

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Speaker 1: was for the formerly American woman to go through the

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Speaker 1: same naturalization process as immigrants, only if she'd be applying

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Speaker 1: to become a citizen of the very country in which

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Speaker 1: she was born. The results of the law were devastating

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Speaker 1: to tens of thousands of American born women. They lost

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Speaker 1: the right to claim mother's pensions and social Security, and

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Speaker 1: they were barred from government programs and from holding certain jobs.

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Speaker 1: They also became vulnerable to deportation, and if they ever

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Speaker 1: traveled outside the country, they wouldn't be allowed back in.

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Speaker 1: These women's voting rights were forfeit as well. American women

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Speaker 1: had been gaining suffrage once state at a time, but

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Speaker 1: as Ethel Mackenzie found out, that hard fought right could

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Speaker 1: be stripped away in an instant if you married the

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Speaker 1: wrong person. The Supreme Court argued that the Expatriation Act

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Speaker 1: was constitutional because the women weren't being forced to give

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Speaker 1: up their citizenship. They were choosing to marry foreigners quote

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Speaker 1: with knowledge of the consequences, and in the court's view,

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Speaker 1: that made their expatriation voluntary. Of course, that wasn't actually

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Speaker 1: true in most cases. Thousands of women who lost their citizenship,

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Speaker 1: including Ethel Mackenzie, had never heard of the law at

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Speaker 1: the time of their weddings. For women who had married

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Speaker 1: German immigrants, the news hit extra hard after the US

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Speaker 1: entered World War I. Not only did they lose their citizenship,

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Speaker 1: they also had to register as enemy aliens. As knowledge

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Speaker 1: of the law gradually and often painfully spread, repealing the

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Speaker 1: Act became a top priority for the women's suffrage movement,

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Speaker 1: and while the same can't be said for most of

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Speaker 1: the nation's lawmakers, a few of them did change their tunes.

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Speaker 1: Once the nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly there was a wellspring of support for women's causes

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Speaker 1: in Congress, especially among members who were up for reelection.

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Speaker 1: One such congressman, Representative John Cable of Ohio, introduced a

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Speaker 1: bill to amend the law in nineteen twenty two. The

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Speaker 1: legislation ultimately passed, but it didn't fully repeal the Expatriation Act.

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Speaker 1: Although it ensured that most American women would retain their

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Speaker 1: citizenship after marrying a foreigner, Cable's bill didn't automatically restore

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Speaker 1: the citizenship of women who had lost it already. They

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Speaker 1: had to apply to repatriate and go through the naturalization

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Speaker 1: process as if they were true immigrants. The Cable Act,

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Speaker 1: as it was called, also excluded American born women who

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Speaker 1: married Asian immigrants, because at the time, Asian men and

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Speaker 1: women were completely barred from naturalization. The Expatriation Act itself

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Speaker 1: was repealed altogether in nineteen thirty one, thanks in large

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Speaker 1: part to the newly elected women in Congress, but the

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Speaker 1: discriminatory restrictions on Asian naturalization remained in place until the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. There's no official count of the American women

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Speaker 1: affected by the Expatriation Act, but the National Archive contains

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Speaker 1: more than ten thousand repatriation applications, and it's likely that

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Speaker 1: some women never bothered to reapply or simply didn't know

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Speaker 1: they needed to. As for Ethel Mackenzie, she had her

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Speaker 1: citizenship restored in nineteen sixteen when her husband Gordon was naturalized.

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Speaker 1: Six years later, after the passage of the Cable Act,

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Speaker 1: she told the press quote, I am glad that an

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Speaker 1: injustice to women has at last been recognized by gradual unfoldment.

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Speaker 1: Women are winning equal rights with men. My fight was

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Speaker 1: not brought for personal motives. It was a matter of principle.

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Speaker 1: With me. I feel that my fight was not in vain.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know a little

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Speaker 1: more about history today than you did yesterday. You can

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Speaker 1: learn even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have

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Speaker 1: any feedback you'd like to share, feel free to pass

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Speaker 1: it along by writing to this Day at iHeart dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks as always to Chandler Maze for producing the show,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again tomorrow for another day in History class