1869 - Lemma Barkaloo became the first woman in America admitted to law school at Washington University in St. Louis.
1869 – Arabella Mansfield became the first female lawyer in the United States when she was admitted to the Iowa bar.[1]
1870 – Ada Kepley became the first woman to graduate from law school in the United States; she graduated from Chicago University Law School, predecessor to Union College of Law, later known as Northwestern University School of Law.[2]
1872 – Charlotte E. Ray became the first African-American female lawyer in the United States.[3]
1873 - Bradwell v. State of Illinois, 83 U.S. 130 (1873), was a United States Supreme Court case that solidified the narrow reading of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and determined that the right to practice a profession was not among these privileges. The case is also notable for being an early 14th Amendment challenge to sex discrimination in the United States. In this case the United States Supreme Court held that Illinois constitutionally denied law licenses to women, because the right to practice law was not one of the privileges and immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed.
1877 - On March 22, 1877, the Wisconsin legislature enacted a law which prohibited courts from denying admission to the bar on the basis of sex. The bill had been drafted by Lavinia Goodell and she worked with Speaker of the Wisconsin State AssemblyJohn B. Cassoday for it to pass.[4][5]
1879: A law was enacted allowing qualified female attorneys to practice in any federal court in the United States.[6]
1922 – Florence E. Allen became the first woman ever elected to a state supreme court (specifically, the Ohio Supreme Court).[9]
1922 – Florence King became the first woman to argue a patent case before the U.S. Supreme Court.[10]
1923 – Florence King became the first woman to win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923 (Crown v. Nye).[10]
1928 – Genevieve Cline won U.S. Senate confirmation on May 25, 1928, as a judge of the United States Customs Court (now known as the Court of International Trade), received her commission on May 26, 1928, and took her oath of office in the Cleveland Federal Building on June 5, 1928,[11] thus becoming the first American woman ever appointed to the federal bench.[12]
1929 - Olive H. Rabe became the first woman to argue a free speech case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1929 (United States v. Schwimmer).[13]
1965 – Lorna E. Lockwood became the first woman chief justice of any state (specifically, she was chief justice of Arizona).[14]
1984 - In Hishon v. King & Spaulding (1984) the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination by employers in the context of any contractual employer/employee relationship, including but not limited to law partnerships.[20]
1988 – Juanita Kidd Stout was appointed to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, thus becoming the first African-American woman to serve on a state's highest court.[3]
2016–present – women enrolled in U.S. law schools outnumber men.[24]
2023 – Women comprised 50.3 percent of U.S. law firm associates, exceeding men in the profession for the first time in the United States, increased from 38 percent in 1991.[25]
2023 – over half of JD students enrolled at ABA-accredited schools are women.[25]
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