In addition, she founded the Woman Citizen, a monthly publication of Indiana's Equal Suffrage Association, in 1911 and served as its editor for two years.
Two plaques in the rotunda of the Sullivan County Courthouse commemorate Leach's life and her successful effort to secure women the right to practice law in Indiana.
[2][4] Antoinette Dakin married George W. Leach, a Sullivan businessman, when she was aged twenty and still a student attending Ohio Wesleyan.
[8][9] Leach applied for admission to the Greene County, Indiana, bar on February 14, 1893, in a petition submitted by John Bays, her employer.
[10] Judge Briggs blocked her from practicing law on the basis that Article 7, Section 21, of the Indiana Constitution and an 1881 state statue described those eligible for admission to the bar had to be a voter, among other qualifications.
The judge ruled that Leach did not meet all the qualifications because she was not a voter (women had not yet been granted suffrage in Indiana at that time) and denied her petition to be admitted to the bar.
[3][9] Justice Leonard J. Hackney, writing on behalf of the court, explained that the Indiana Constitution should not be interpreted as disqualifying nonvoters from becoming lawyers and that women who met all the other qualifications, as Leach did, had the right to practice law.
"[9] He also remarked in the court's decision: "If nature has endowed woman with wisdom, if our colleges have given her education, if her energy and diligence have led her to a knowledge of the law, and if her ambition directs her to adopt the profession, shall it be said that forgotten fictions must bar the door against her?
The Indiana decision was a progressive one for the time; other state supreme courts, such as Illinois, had denied similar petitions from other women.
[15][16] After winning her landmark Indiana Supreme Court case, Leach was sworn in as a member of the Sullivan County bar on October 10, 1893.
"[21] Leach also founded the Woman Citizen, a monthly publication of Indiana's Equal Suffrage Association, in 1911 and served as its editor for two years.
[22] In February 1911 Leach spoke before the Indiana General Assembly in favor of amending the state constitution to grant women the right to vote.
[22] Leach and her husband were involved in local businesses, including a department store called the Golden Rule in Sullivan that she also managed.
[23] Antoinette Dakin Leach died at her daughter's home at Oxford, New York, on June 11, 1922, at the age of sixty-three, two years after Indiana women won the right to vote.
The landmark case broke the gender barrier for admission to the bar in Indiana, securing the women's right to practice law in the state.
In 1993 another tablet was placed in the Sullivan County Courthouse's rotunda to commemorate the centennial of her successful effort to secure women the right to practice law in Indiana.
[3] Each year the Indianapolis Bar Association names one of the state's women lawyers as the recipient of the Antoinette Dakin Leach Award.