In the case of In re Garnett and Others, 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with a dispute over land ownership in California. The plaintiffs claimed that they had acquired rights to certain lands under Mexican law before California became part of the United States. However, their claims were rejected by both lower courts and eventually reached the Supreme Court. The court held that while Mexican law did allow for private individuals to acquire rights to public lands under certain conditions, those conditions had not been met in this case; specifically, there was no evidence that any formal grant or concession had ever been made by competent authority as required by Mexican law at relevant times. Therefore, it ruled against Garnett and others affirming previous decisions denying them title to these lands.

The dissenting opinion in the case of In re Garnett and Others, 1890, argued that the majority's decision to uphold a law prohibiting women from practicing law was unjust. The dissenters believed that this ruling violated equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. They contended that there were no inherent differences between men and women which would make one sex more suited to practice law than another. Furthermore, they pointed out that many states had already allowed women to become lawyers without any negative consequences for their legal systems or societies at large. Therefore, they saw no compelling reason why such a prohibition should be upheld by the Supreme Court.