Cable Act

Cable Act
Great Seal of the United States
Other short titles
  • Married Women's Citizenship Act
  • Married Women's Independent Nationality Act
  • Women's Citizenship Act
Long titleAn Act relative to the naturalization and citizenship of married women.
NicknamesCable Act of 1922
Enacted bythe 67th United States Congress
EffectiveSeptember 22, 1922 (at very bottom of page and on following pages)
Citations
Public law67-346
Statutes at Large42 Stat. 1021b
Codification
Acts repealedExpatriation Act of 1907
Titles amended8 U.S.C.: Aliens and Nationality
U.S.C. sections created8 U.S.C. ch. 9 §§ 367–370
Legislative history

The Cable Act of 1922 (ch. 411, 42 Stat. 1021, "Married Women's Independent Nationality Act") was a United States federal law that partially reversed the Expatriation Act of 1907. (It is also known as the Married Women's Citizenship Act or the Women's Citizenship Act). In theory the law was designed to grant women their own national identity; however, in practice, as it still retained vestiges of coverture, tying a woman's legal identity to her husband's, it had to be amended multiple times before it granted women citizenship in their own right.