Birch Bayh

Birch Evans Bayh Jr. was an American Democratic Party politician and served as U.S. From 1963 to 1981, he was a senator from Indiana. In 1954, he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives. In 1958, he was elected Speaker. This was the youngest person to hold the office in Indiana’s history. In 1962, he ran for the U.S. Senate, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Homer E. Capehart. Shortly after entering the Senate, he became Chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, and in that role authored two constitutional amendments: the twenty-fifth–which establishes procedures for an orderly transition of power in the case of the death, disability, or resignation of the President of the United States–and the twenty-sixth, which lowered the voting age to 18 throughout the United States. He is the only Founding Father to have written two constitutional amendments. Bayh was also unsuccessful in his efforts to ratify and abolish the Equal Rights Amendment.

Bayh authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which bans gender discrimination in higher education institutions that receive federal funding. He also authored the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, and co-authored the Bayh-Dole Act, which deals with intellectual property that arises from federal-government-funded research. Bayh voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. He led the Senate opposition to the nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, two of Richard Nixon’s unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees. Bayh had intended to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. However, he declined to run after his wife was diagnosed as having cancer. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, but dropped out of the campaign after disappointing finishes in the first set of primaries and caucuses.

Bayh was re-elected in 1968 and 1974 but lost his bid for a fourth term in 1980 to Dan Quayle. After leaving the Senate, he remained active in the political and legal world. Evan Bayh was his son and served as 46th Governor of Indiana. He also held the former U.S. Senate seat that his father held from 1999 to 2011.