Cable Act Grants Women Citizenship Independent of Husband’s Status
The Cable Act, effective on this day, officially the Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act, made a woman’s citizenship independent of her husband’s citizenship. Previously, a 1907 law required that an American woman who married a foreign national was forced to assume her husband’s nationality and lose her U.S. citizenship.
Section 4 of the Cable Act provided “That a woman who, before the passage of this Act, has lost her United States
After years of lobbying by Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, Congress on May 24, 1935 passed the Dickstein-Copeland bill (which Alice Paul had drafted), which expanded the coverage of the Cable Act to ensure equality in the treatment of all nationalities. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Equal Nationality Treaty on May 25th.
Learn more about the Cable Act: http://www.ndhs.org/s/1012/images/editor_documents/library/issues_and_controversies_in_american_history_-_cable_act__1922_.pdf
Read the Cable Act here
Read about “When Saying ‘I Do” Meant Giving Up Your U.S. Citizenship” here