In Ballard v. United States, 329 U.S. 187 (1946), the female petitioner was convicted of federal mail fraud in a federal district court in California, where women were eligible for jury service under state law. Congress had provided that jurors in a federal court shall have the same qualifications as those of the highest court of law in the State in which it sits, Judicial Code § 275, 28 U.S.C. § 411. The Supreme Court ruled that federal juries located in states that allowed women jurors must be "a cross-section of the community" and truly representative of it. Women could not be excluded from jury pools. At the time of the case, women were eligible for jury service under local law in more than half of the states. The rule did not apply to federal courts in the states where women could not serve.
