Myra Bradwell's case was one of the first to advocate for use of the 14th Amendment to defend women's rights. Myra Bradwell had passed the Illinois law exam, and a circuit court judge and a state attorney had each signed a certificate of qualification, recommending that the state grant her a license to practice law.
However, the Supreme Court of Illinois denied her application on October 6, 1869. The court took into consideration the legal status of a woman as a "femme covert" -- that is, as a married woman, Myra Bradwell was legally disabled. She was, under the common law of the time, prohibited from owning property or entering into legal agreements. As a married woman, she had no legal existence apart from her husband.
Myra Bradwell challenged this decision. She took her case back to the Illinois Supreme Court, using the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection language in the first article to defend her right to choose a livelihood. In her brief, Bradwell wrote "that it is one of the privileges and immunities of women as citizens to engage in any and every provision, occupation or employment in civil life."
The Supreme Court found otherwise. In a much-quoted concurring opinion, Justice Joseph P. Bradley wrote "It certainly cannot be affirmed, as a historical fact, that this [the right to choose one's profession] has ever been established as one of the fundamental privileges and immunities of the sex." Instead, he wrote, "The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother."
While the Bradwell case raised the possibility that the 14th Amendment could justify women's equality, the courts were not ready to agree.
