An Open Letter

Hello Everyone

Most of you have seen my past e-mails that question the "Office Qualifications" of HillaryClinton to be a Candidate for the Office of President of The United States of America. It ismy view that the women of our Nation of The United States of America are not "natural bornCitizens," a constitutional requirement for the President (U.S. Const., Art. II, Sec. 1, Cl. 5)and Vice-President (U.S. Const., Amend. XII) of the United States.

It past messages, I laid out the reasons why women are in want of having the status of a"natural born Citizen," but I am afraid with the generation of today not being educated in thelives of early day citizens of our Nation, the people of today’s generation are mistakenly inbelief that women are "on par" with the "Political Rights" of "white men" including the"Political Rights" to the Office of President of The United States of America.

Here I must remind everyone that "Constitutions" are not "Statutory Laws" and as such, theirmeaning and intent don't change over the years (living documents). They are "fixed"documents and the understanding of the "words and phrases" as used in "Constitutions" arethe same today as the day those "Constitutions" were written.

I have attached a PDF Document to this message that addresses the rights of women asexercised from the early days of our U.S. Constitution to the present day. This document of"Women in U.S. Constitutional History" is further documentation that shows that women arenot "natural born Citizens" of the United States and as such, Hillary Clinton is in want of

Subject: Women are not "natural born Citizens" of the United StatesFrom: "Gordon Epperly" <enter7740@14th-amendment.com>Sent: 9/1/2016 3:24:05 PMTo:CC: becky.weimer@alaska.gov;brian.jackson@alaska.gov;josie.bahnke@alaska.govAttachments: Women in US Constitutional History.pdf

"Office Qualifications" to be a Candidate for the Office of President of the United States.

I am sure the "Director of Elections" for the State of Alaska will be in compliance with theU.S. Constitution and will give "Notice" that the name of "Hillary Rodham Clinton" will not beappearing on the "Election Ballots" of the State of Alaska.

As the former "Director of Elections" (on guidance of the Office of the Alaska AttorneyGeneral) has declared that there are no procedures in place to question "Office Qualifications"of Candidates for the "Office of President" of the United States, I would like to encourage the"Director of Elections" to issue forth a determination on her own cognizance of the issue. Ihope there will be no need for a "Court Order" from the Superior Court for the State of Alaskato resolve this matter.

Respectfully Submitted

Gordon Warren EpperlyP.O. Box 34358

Juneau, Alaska 99803

Tel: (907) 789-5659

Women's Equality Under Federal Law

By Jone Johnson LewisWomen's History Expert

US Supreme Court Building

The United States Constitution did not mention women or limit any of its rights or privilegesto males. The word "persons" was used, which sounds gender neutral. However, common law,inherited from British precedents, informed the interpretation of the law. And many state lawswere not gender-neutral. While right after the Constitution was adopted, New Jersey acceptedvoting rights for women, even those had been lost by a bill in 1807 that rescinded the rightof both women and black men to vote in that state.

The principle of coverture prevailed at the time the Constitution was written and adopted:a married woman was simply not a person under the law; her legal existence was bound up withthat of her husband's.

Dower rights, meant to protect a widow's income during her lifetime, were already beingignored increasingly, and so women were in the tough position of not having significant rightsto own property, while the convention of dower that had protected them under that systemwas collapsing.

Beginning in the 1840s, women's rights advocates began working to establish legal andpolitical equality for women in some of the states. Property rights of women were amongthe first targets. But these did not affect the federal constitutional rights of women. Not yet.

Women in U.S. Constitutional History:Sex Discrimination

1868: Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The first major constitutional change to affect women's rights was the Fourteenth Amendment.This amendment was designed to overturn the Dred Scott decision, which found thatblack people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect," and to clarify othercitizenship rights after the American Civil War had ended. The primary effect was to ensure thatfreed slaves and other African Americans had full citizenship rights.

But the amendment also included the word "male" in connection with voting, andthe women's rights movement split over whether to support the amendment becauseit established racial equality in voting, or oppose it because it was the first explicit federal denialthat women had voting rights.

Women's Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment

1873: Bradwell v. Illinois

Myra Bradwell claimed the right to practice law as part of the 14th Amendment's protections.The Supreme Court found that the right to choose one's profession was not a protected right,and that women's "paramount destiny and mission" was the "offices of wife and mother."Women could be legally excluded from the practice of law, the Supreme Court found,using a separate spheres argument.

Myra Bradwell's Case

1875: Minor v. Happerset

The suffrage movement decided to use the Fourteenth Amendment, even with that mentionof "male," to justify women voting. A number of women in 1872 attempted to vote ina federal election; Susan B. Anthony was arrested and convicted for doing so. A Missouriwoman, Virginia Minor, also challenged the law. The registrar's action forbidding her fromvoting was the basis for yet another case to reach the Supreme Court. (Her husband had to filethe lawsuit, as coverture laws forbid her as a married woman from filing on her own behalf.)In their decision, the Court found that while women were indeed citizens, voting was not oneof the "privileges and immunities of citizenship" and thus states could deny women the rightto vote.

Minor v. Happerset

1894: In re Lockwood

Belva Lockwood filed a lawsuit to force Virginia to allow her to practice law. She was alreadya member of the bar in the District of Columbia. But the Supreme Court found that it wasacceptable to read the word "citizens" in the 14th Amendment to include only male citizens.

1903: Muller v. Oregon

Thwarted in legal cases claiming women's full equality as citizens, women's rights and laborrights workers filed the “Brandeis Brief” in the case of Muller v. Oregon. The claim was thatwomen's special status as wives and mothers, especially as mothers, required that they be givenspecial protection as workers. The Supreme Court had been reluctant to allow legislaturesto interfere with contract rights of employers by permitting limits on hours or minimum wagerequirements; however, in this case, the Supreme Court looked at evidence of workingconditions and permit special protections for women in the workplace.

Louis Brandeis, himself later appointed to the Supreme Court, was the lawyer for the casepromoting protective legislation for women; the “Brandeis Brief” was prepared primarily by hissister-in-law Josephine Goldmark and by reformer Florence Kelley.

1920: Nineteenth Amendment

Women were granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1919 andratified by enough states in 1920 to take effect.

1923: Adkins v. Children's Hospital

In 1923, the Supreme Court decided that federal minimum wage legislation applying to womeninfringed on the liberty of contract and thus on the Fifth Amendment. Muller v. Oregon was notoverturned, however.

1923: Equal Rights Amendment

Alice Paul wrote a proposed amendment to the Constitution to require equal rights for men andwomen. She named the proposed amendment for suffrage pioneer Lucretia Mott. When shereworded the amendment in the 1940s, it came to be called the “Alice Paul Amendment.” It didnot pass the Congress until 1972.

Equal Rights Amendment

1938: West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish

This decision by the Supreme Court, overturning Adkins v. Children's Hospital, upheldWashington State's minimum wage legislation, opening the door again for protective laborlegislation applying to women or men.

1948: Goesaert v. Cleary

In this case, the Supreme Court found valid a state statute prohibiting most women (other thanwives of daughters of male tavern keepers) from serving or selling liquor.

1961: Hoyt v. Florida

The Supreme Court heard this case challenging a conviction on the basis that the femaledefendant faced an all-male jury because jury duty was not mandatory for women.The Supreme Court denied that the state statute exempting women from jury dutywas discriminatory, finding that women needed protection from the atmosphere of the courtroomand that it was reasonable to assume that women were needed in the home.

1971: Reed v. Reed

In Reed v. Reed, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case where state law preferred malesto females as administrators of an estate. In this case, unlike many earlier cases, the Court heldthat the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause applied to women equally.

Reed v. Reed

1972: Equal Rights Amendment Passes Congress

In 1972, the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, sending it to the states.The Congress appended a requirement that the amendment be ratified within seven years,later extended to 1982, but only 35 instead of the requisite states ratified it during that period.Some legal scholars challenge the deadline, and by that assessment, the ERA is still alive tobe ratified by three more states.

The "New" Equal Rights Amendment of 1972

1973: Frontiero v. Richardson

In the case of Frontiero v. Richardson, the Supreme Court found that the military could not havedifferent criteria for male spouses of military members in deciding eligibility for benefits,violating the Fifth Amendment's Due Process clause. The court also signaled that it wouldbe using more scrutiny in the future in looking at sex distinctions in the law -- not quitestrict scrutiny, which did not get a majority support among the justices in the case.

Frontiero v. Richardson

1974: Geduldig v. Aiello

Geduldig v. Aiello looked at a state's disability insurance system which excluded temporaryabsences from work due to pregnancy disability, and found that normal pregnancies did not haveto be covered by the system.

Geduldig v. Aiello

1975: Stanton v. Stanton

In this case, the Supreme Court threw out distinctions in the age at which girls and boys wereentitled to child support.

1976: Planned Parenthood v. Danforth

The Supreme Court found that spousal consent laws (in this case, in the third trimester)were unconstitutional, because the pregnant woman's rights were more compelling thanher husband's. The Court did uphold that regulations requiring the woman's full and informedconsent were constitutional.

1976: Craig v. Boren

In Craig v. Boren, the court threw out a law which treated men and women differently in settinga drinking age. The case is also noted for setting out the new standard of judicial review in casesinvolving sex discrimination, intermediate scrutiny.

Craig v. Boren

1979: Orr v. Orr

In Orr v. Orr, the Court held that alimony laws applied equally to women and men, and thatthe means of the partner were to be considered, not merely their sex.

Property Rights of WomenA Short History

By Jone Johnson LewisWomen's History Expert

Portrait of Ernestine Rose

Property rights include the legal rights to acquire, own, sell and transfer property, collect andkeep rents, keep one's wages, make contracts and bring lawsuits.

In history, a woman's property has often, but not always, been under the control of her father or,if she was married, her husband.

Women's Property Rights in the United States

In colonial times, law generally followed that of the mother country, England (or in some partsof what later became the United States, France or Spain).

In the early years of the United States, following British law, women's property was undercontrol of their husbands, with states gradually giving women limited property rights.By 1900 every state had given married women substantial control over their property.

See also: dower, coverture, dowry, curtesy

Some changes in laws affecting American women's property rights:

New York, 1771: Act to Confirm Certain Conveyances and Directing the Manner of ProvingDeeds to Be Recorded: required a married man to have his wife's signature on any deed to herproperty before he sold or transferred it, and required that a judge meet privately with the wifeto confirm her approval.

Maryland, 1774: required a private interview between a judge and a married woman to confirmher approval of any trade or sale by her husband of her property.(1782: Flannagan's Lessee v. Young used this change to invalidate a property transfer)

Massachusetts, 1787: a law was passed which allowed married women in limited circumstancesto act as femme sole traders.

Connecticut, 1809: law passed permitting married women to execute wills

Various courts in colonial and early America: enforced provisions of prenuptial and marriageagreements placing her "separate estate" in a trust managed by a man other than her husband.

Mississippi, 1839: law passed giving a woman very limited property rights, largely inconnection with slaves.

New York, 1848: Married Women's Property Act, a more extensive expansion of property rightsof married women, used as a model for many other states 1848-1895.

New York, 1860: Act Concerning the Rights and Liabilities of Husband and Wife: expandedmarried women's property rights.

Women's Rights and theFourteenth AmendmentControversy Over the Equal Protection Clause

By Jone Johnson LewisWomen's History Expert

Draft of the 14th Amendment

Beginnings: Adding "Male" to the Constitution

After the American Civil War, several legal challenges faced the newly-reunited nation.One was how to define a citizen so that former slaves, and other African Americans,were included. (The Dred Scott decision, before the Civil War, had declared that black people"had no rights which the white man was bound to respect....") The citizenship rights of thosewho had rebelled against the federal government or who had participated in secession were alsoin question.

One response was the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, proposedon June 13, 1866, and ratified July 28, 1868.

During the Civil War, the developing women's rights movement had largely put their agendaon hold, with most of the women's rights advocates supporting the Union efforts. Many ofthe women's rights advocates had been abolitionists as well, and so they eagerly supportedthe war which they believed would end slavery.

When the Civil War ended, women's rights advocates expected to take up their cause once again,joined by the male abolitionists whose cause had been won. But when

the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed, the women's rights movement split over whetherto support it as a means of finishing the job of establishing full citizenship for the freed slavesand other African Americans.

Why was the Fourteenth Amendment controversial in women's rights circles? Because, for thefirst time, the proposed Amendment added the word "male" into the U.S. Constitution, Section 2,which dealt explicitly with voting rights, used the term "male." And women's rights advocates,especially those who were promoting woman suffrage or the granting of the vote to women,were outraged.

Some women's rights supporters, including Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe,and Frederick Douglass, supported the Fourteenth Amendment as essential to guaranteeingblack equality and full citizenship, even though it was flawed in only applying voting rightsto males. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the efforts of somewomen's suffrage supporters to try to defeat both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,because the Fourteenth Amendment included the offensive focus on male voters.

When the Amendment was ratified, they advocated, without success, for a universalsuffrage amendment.

Each side of this controversy saw the others as betraying basic principles of equality:supporters of the 14th Amendment saw the opponents as betraying efforts for racial equality,and opponents saw the supporters as betraying efforts for the equality of the sexes.Stone and Howe founded the American Woman Suffrage Association and a paper,the Woman's Journal. Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Associationand began publishing the Revolution.

The rift would not be healed until, in the late years of the 19th century, the two organizationsmerged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Women's Rights andthe Fourteenth Amendment- Voting Rights?Minor v. Happerset, U.S. v. Susan B. Anthony

By Jone Johnson LewisWomen's History Expert

Virginia Minor.

While the second article of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specified certainvoting rights connected with males only, women's rights advocates decided that the first articlecould be used instead to support the full citizenship rights of women.

In a strategy carried out by the more radical wing of the movement, led by Susan B. Anthonyand Elizabeth Cady Stanton, woman suffrage supporters attempted to cast ballots in 1872.Susan B. Anthony was among those who did so; she was arrested and convicted for this action.

Another woman, Virginia Minor, was turned away from the St. Louis polls when she triedto vote -- and her husband, Frances Minor, sued Reese Happersett, the registrar.(Under "femme covert" presumptions in the law, Virginia Minor could not sue in her own right.)

The “Minors' Brief” argued that "There can be no half-way citizenship. Woman, as a citizen inthe United States, is entitled to all the benefits of that position, and liable to all its obligations,or to none."

In a unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett found thatwomen born or naturalized in the United States were indeed American citizens (but neverdeclared women to be “natural born Citizens”), and that they always had been even beforethe Fourteenth Amendment. But, the Supreme Court also found, voting was not one ofthe "privileges and immunities of citizenship" and therefore States need not grant voting rightsor suffrage to women.

Once again, the Fourteenth Amendment was used to try to ground argumentsfor women's equality and the right as citizens to vote and hold office -- but the courtsdid not agree.

Women's Rights andthe Fourteenth Amendment- Finally AppliedReed v. Reed and Roe v. Wade

By Jone Johnson LewisWomen's History Expert

Equality?

Reed v. Reed

In 1971, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Reed v. Reed. Sally Reed had suedwhen Idaho law presumed that her estranged husband should be automatically selected asexecutor of the estate of their son, who had died without naming an executor. The Idaho lawstated that "males must be preferred to females" in choosing estate administrators.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Warren E.

Burger, decided that the Fourteenth Amendment did prohibit such unequal treatment on the basisof sex -- the first US Supreme Court decision to apply the Fourteenth Amendment's equalprotection clause to gender or sexual distinctions. Later cases have refined the application of theFourteenth Amendment to sex discrimination, but it was more than 100 years after passage of theFourteenth Amendment before it was applied to women's rights.

Roe v. Wade

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Roe v. Wade that the Fourteenth Amendmentrestricted, on the basis of the Due Process clause, the government's ability to restrictor prohibit abortions. Any criminal abortion statute that did not take into account the stageof pregnancy and other interests than merely the life of the mother was deemed to be a violationof due process.

Women's Rights andthe Equal Protection ClauseText of the Fourteenth Amendment

By Jone Johnson LewisWomen's History Expert

Draft of the 14th Amendment.

The entire text of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,proposed on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 28, 1868, is as follows:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject tothe jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State whereinthey reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privilegesor immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any personof life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person withinits jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States accordingto their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State,excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choiceof electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representativesin Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members ofthe Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State,being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged,except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein

shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bearto the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or electorof President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, underthe United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a memberof Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature,or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution ofthe United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirdsof each House, remove such disability.

Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressinginsurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States norany State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrectionor rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation ofany slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation,the provisions of this article.

Text of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be deniedor abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color,or previous condition of servitude.

Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this articleby appropriate legislation.