Wyoming State Motto: Equal Rights

Wyoming's state motto is Equal Rights, codified in Wyoming Statutes §8-3-107. The statute defines it as the motto "as it exists on the great seal of the state of Wyoming," where it has appeared since 1893.

Wyoming's nickname is "The Equality State," and both the nickname and the motto trace back to the same moment: Wyoming Territory's 1869 decision to grant women the right to vote — more than 50 years before the 19th Amendment extended that right nationwide.

On December 10, 1869, Governor John Allen Campbell signed "An Act to Grant to the Women of Wyoming Territory the Right of Suffrage and to Hold Office." Wyoming Territory became the first government in the United States to grant women full voting rights. Women in Wyoming also served as jurors beginning in 1870 — another first.

Wyoming became a state on July 10, 1890. The new state constitution guaranteed women's suffrage, the only state constitution to do so at the time. Three years later, the Second Legislature adopted the state's Great Seal. Philadelphia artist Edmund Stewardson designed the seal, submitting it to Governor Amos W. Barber in 1892. The Second Legislature adopted it in 1893.

The seal placed a female figure at its center — standing on a pedestal, holding a staff with an "Equal Rights" banner, with broken chains hanging from her wrists. The motto was not a slogan added later: it was built into the seal from the beginning, tied directly to what Wyoming had already done.