BY Somesh Mahajan
Born in Pennsylvania on August 17, 1838, Laura de Force Gordon migrated to the West Coast just after the United States Civil War, eventually settling in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Not long after her arrival, she shook up the young state by delivering its first public lecture calling for woman suffrage in February 1868. From that moment on, she shaped the campaign for suffrage in the west. Certainly, she was not the only pioneering woman in California leading the fight for the “good cause.” Indeed, many other women and men contributed in key fashion to the spirited, if unsuccessful, struggle for the women’s vote. However, Gordon possessed such intellect, eloquence and imagination that she enjoyed an unusually powerful and influential position within the movement. Gordon’s talents and persuasiveness commanded such attention that others often sought her collaboration and advocacy in their causes which were wholly separate from woman suffrage, and her dogged dedication and seemingly boundless energy propelled her into several professions.
Her skills in public lecturing and persuasion made her a natural and effective lobbyist before the state legislature. Since her first appearance in 1870 before the California Senate in front of Judge Tweed, she had received praise for her logical abilities and knowledge of constitutional law. This prompted her to begin reading law, in 1877, even though no woman had yet been admitted to the California Bar. That same year Gordon found a colleague who was equally prepared for the task: Clara Shortridge Foltz. A busy woman as well, Foltz had already drafted a proposed bill which, if adopted, would guarantee a woman the right to practice law or any other profession of her choice. Friends of Foltz recommended that she enlist Gordon’s aid, due to Gordon’s lobbying expertise, and Gordon gladly accepted the challenge.
Because Foltz and Gordon both desired to enter the legal profession, the bill quickly became known as the “Woman Lawyer’s Bill.” Despite the usual rancour that accompanied such radical legislation, the bill became a permanent part of the California Constitution in 1878. Gordon and Foltz independently studied the law so completely that they were admitted to the bar by the California Supreme Court on December 6, 1879. Within two months after being admitted to the state bar, Gordon launched a law practice from a San Francisco office, excelling in criminal defence and other general practice areas. In her first notable legal challenge, Gordon represented two women who had been barred from working in a San Francisco saloon under that city’s “dive ordinance.” That protective code provided that women should not work in places where liquor was sold. Once again, Gordon argued that this limitation constituted a constitutionally impermissible bar on her clients’ right to enjoy an occupation of their choice, based on Foltz’s 1878 amendment.
While the prosecutor argued that the legislature never intended that the “Woman’s Lawyer Bill” would alter public morality or sentiment regarding women’s employment in saloons or the like, Gordon articulated the simple but forceful argument that the Constitution now guaranteed fundamental equality between women and men. Sensing the precedential value of the legal claim, the trial court heard Gordon’s argument en banc, and decided in her clients’ favour by a vote of eight to two. Gordon’s legal practice was profitable, as well. She maintained an office in San Francisco until 1901, adding a mix of civil and family law clients to her criminal defence cases. Her representation of Southern Pacific Rail Road must have pleased her huge client, since she was given an unlimited lifetime pass for use on the carrier.
Gordon was also admitted to the United States Supreme Court on February 3, 1883, the second woman following Belva Lockwood, although there is no record of her having argued a case in front of that court. In all Gordon practiced law for twenty years, even when her suffrage work threatened to take over her legal practice, retiring from the profession in 1901. Without a doubt, she proved indisputably that women were capable of practicing law. From the earliest point in her career, she sought to “make a showing that [would] be a refutation of the belief that women will not do for the law.” Years later, when people would explain her success as merely an exceptional case, she would reply that “[t]he number of men who have become noted for their brilliant intellectual attainments are but a fraction compared with the whole number of men in the world.” Laura de Force Gordon died on her farm in Lodi, California, to which she had retired, after a battle with a severe cold, on April 5, 1907.