Court Opinion

ID: 9721272
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:54:26.411315+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:24.524453
License: Public Domain

FLEMING, J.,
titles of military rank the market in titles for women never ceases to fluctuate. The earlier respected title of Mistress has fallen on hard times, and the once vaunted title of Madam has suffered a worse fate, rehabilitative efforts of Frances Perkins and Pearl Mesta notwithstanding. On the other hand the title Miss, probably an abbreviation for Mistress, has risen in the scale from a designation for a concubine to one for a young unmarried woman, while the title Mrs., also an abbreviation for Mistress, has fallen from a title of gentility to one now extended to all married women without superior titles. Petitioners here assert a constitutional right to the use of a third title, Ms., on the ground they are affronted and offended by having to choose between Miss and Mrs. and thereby designate their marital status for purposes of voting registration.
Apart from general custom I find no essential connection between marital status and use of the titles, Miss and Mrs. Actresses today, even those who have married as many times as the sands of the sea, use the title Miss. In past centuries the practice was the precise opposite, and actresses and
*455authoresses used the title Mrs. regardless of marital status, as for example, Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Hannah More. Nor was this custom limited to women in public life, for during the 17th and 18th centuries usage of the title Mrs. by unmarried women in private life was common. (See entry for Mrs. in The Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press (Oxford 1933).)
In my view a female voter registrant is free to use either of the two authorized descriptive titles, Miss or Mrs., regardless of marital status. If a choice of two titles is deemed insufficient and a third option is desired, then the remedy lies with the Legislature and not with the courts.
A petition for a rehearing was denied October 29, 1973, and appellants’ petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied December 5, 1973. Tobriner, J., Mosk, J., and Sullivan, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.