Riley v. Holmer

• Decision Date: 21 October 1930
• Citation: 131 So. 330,100 Fla. 938
• Court: Florida Supreme Court
• Parties: RILEY v. HOLMER, County Sup'r of Registration.

131 So. 330

100 Fla. 938

RILEY v. HOLMER, County Sup'r of Registration.

Florida Supreme Court

October 21, 1930

En Banc.

Error to Circuit Court, Dade County; H. F. Atkinson, Judge.

Mandamus proceedings by Bernard R. Riley, opposed by Carl Holmer Supervisor of Registration of Dade County. Judgment was entered dismissing the writ, and plaintiff brings error.

Affirmed.

COUNSEL Bart A. Riley, of Miami, for plaintiff in error.

Effie Knowles of Miami, for defendant in error.

OPINION

TERRELL C.J.

Plaintiff in error, being a married male minor of the age of eighteen years, exhibited his petition in mandamus against the defendant in error, as supervisor of registration of Dade county, Fla., to require that he (petitioner) be permitted to register as a prerequisite to vote in the primary and general elections to be held in 1930. A demurrer to the alternative writ was sustained and the writ dismissed. Writ of error was taken to that judgment.

This suit was brought on the theory that the fact of his marriage emancipated the petitioner from the disability of nonage in so far as it relates to the right of suffrage. In this situation, the sole question presented here for our consideration in whether or not, under the law of this state marriage has the effect of removing the infirmity of nonage from a male minor and makiing him eligible to vote.

For the relief sought, plaintiff in error relies on section 3962 Revised General Statutes of 1920 (section 5881, Compiled General Laws of 1927), which is as follows:

'The disability of nonage of all male minors who are married, who have been married, or who may hereafter become married, is hereby removed, and that hereafter all such persons are hereby authorized to assume the management of their estate, to contract and be contracted with, to sue and be sued, and to do and perform any and all acts, matters and things that he could do if he were twenty-one years of age.'

Under our law, both males and females are minors till they reach the age of twenty-one years. Beekman v. Beekman, 53 Fla. 858, 43 So. 923. This was the common-law rule. To what extent the disability of minority may be removed depends on statutory and constitutional provisions. 31 C.J. 986. It is competent for the Legislature to regulate the age of minority or majority, and it may prescribe a different age for the two sexes. In some states, the emancipation statutes by reason of marriage seem to have the effect of removing all the disabilities of nonage as though the one affected had attained the age of majority. Roe v. Caldwell, 145 La. 853, 83 So. 43; Hays v. Bowdoin, 159 Ala. 600, 49 So. 122; White v. Latimer, 12 Tex. 61; 31 C.J. 986.

Our statute as here quoted for the removal of the disabilities of married male minors appears to have been designed to remove all the civil disabilities imposed by reason of minority, but as to the right to vote it is ineffective, because section 1 of article 6 of the Constitution, in defining the qualifications to vote, among others, limits the right of suffrage to male citizens twenty-one years of age. Article 19 of the...