Women are not able to hold public offices.

Explanation

This maxim reflected the common law disability of women from holding public office — a rule long since superseded. The right of women to hold office came through the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee and reforms in the several state constitutions, not the Nineteenth Amendment, which secured the distinct right to vote.

Where this applies

• A historical challenge is brought against a law barring women from serving as judges, and the court strikes it as a relic of a common-law disability that has been superseded by constitutional guarantees of equal protection.
• A woman is denied appointment to a state commission under an old statute restricting public office to men, and the court invalidates the restriction as incompatible with the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause and modern state constitutional reforms.
• A legal historian examines the old common-law rule excluding women from holding office and notes that it was abolished not by a single amendment but by the cumulative effect of equal protection guarantees and changes to state constitutions over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.