Thirty-eight states are required to ratify an amendment to the Constitution, but Congress required states to approve the amendment within seven years meaning that despite Virginias approval, the amendment could face legal challenges. This had the effect of formally proposing the amendment to the states for ratification.REF. These women argued that the ERA would disadvantage housewives, cause women to be drafted into the military and to lose protections such as alimony, and eliminate the tendency for mothers to obtain custody over their children in divorce cases. A brief history of ratification in the states. Eisenhower had publicly promised to "assure women everywhere in our land equality of rights," and in 1958, Eisenhower asked a joint session of Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the first president to show such a level of support for the amendment. In the United States, the fight for a federal Equal Rights Amendment has been a century in the making. [138], Many African-American women have supported the ERA. Illinois, which in 1972 helped block the Equal Rights Amendment, has a chance to correct that mistake. [72], On February 11, 2022, the West Virginia Senate passed a resolution rescinding West Virginia's ratification of the ERA but this resolution has not yet been adopted by the West Virginia House. By 1979, 35 states had done sobut then ratifications stalled. [164][165] Critchlow and Stachecki say the anti-ERA movement was based on strong backing among Southern whites, Evangelical Christians, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Jews, and Roman Catholics, including both men and women. The Supreme Courts general comment in Dillon that a proposed constitutional amendment should not be open to ratification for all timeREF implied that the Constitution itself imposed a ratification deadline. At various times, in six of the 12 non-ratifying states, one house of the legislature approved the ERA. This amendment was sometimes known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment and became the 19th Amendment. 1, introduced by Senator Ben Cardin, was co-sponsored by all members of the Senate Democratic Caucus and Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. 29), Idaho (February 8, 1977: House Concurrent Resolution No. First proposed by the. The Handbook of Texas Women project has its own dedicated website and resources. The commission, composed largely of anti-ERA feminists with ties to labor, proposed remedies to the widespread sex discrimination it unearthed. More importantly, the B&PW hired a lobbyist, a friend of Mutscher, for the 1971 legislative session, particularly to guide the amendment through the Texas House. If, indeed, a state legislature has the ability to rescind, then the ERA actually had ratifications by only 30 statesnot 35when March 22, 1979, arrived. On March 22, 1972, the Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, which proposed banning discrimination based on sex. Fair Park is an important place in the story of ratification. Chicago . The assertion that the 1972 ERA can still be ratified today is based on four errors. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.[17]. It has, for example, imposed a ratification deadline for seven of the amendments that today are part of the Constitution and for the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment. The Texas ERA passed on Nov. 7, 1972, with 2,156,536 votes in favor, 548,422 votes against. Support in the states that had not ratified fell below 50%. "[116] An en banc rehearing request was denied on January 4, 2022. The Texas Legislature ratified the Equal Rights Amendment during a special session on March 30, 1972. [139] One prominent female supporter was New York representative Shirley Chisholm. West Virginia ratified the amendment in April 1972, the same year that Congress sent it to the states. The Court said no. NOW disrupted the hearings and demanded a hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment and won a meeting with senators to discuss the ERA. Between 1995 and 2016, ERA ratification bills were released from committee in some states and were passed by one but not both houses of the legislature in two of them. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.". As this Legal Memorandum will explain, advocates who claim that the 1972 ERA can still be ratified make four errors. "[147] They appealed to married women by stressing that the amendment would invalidate protective laws such as alimony and eliminate the tendency for mothers to obtain custody over their children in divorce cases. [193] The resolution had 56 cosponsors. In five of the six years between 2011 and 2016, the Virginia Senate passed a resolution ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, but the House of Delegates never released a companion bill from committee for a full vote on the House floor. In the final week before the revised deadline, that ratifying resolution, however, was defeated in the Florida Senate by a vote of 16 to 22. Groups as varied as the Ladies Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Association of University Women endorsed ratification. [35], At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, a proposal to endorse the ERA was rejected after it was opposed by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union[36] (ACLU), the AFLCIO, labor unions such as the American Federation of Teachers, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the American Nurses Association, the Women's Division of the Methodist Church, and the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women. , As of 2022, the Twenty-seventh amendment. That was the last time that the ERA received a floor vote in either house of Congress. According to Professor Edward H. Miller, it played a key role in addition to Schlafly in preventing the amendments ratification. "[154] When Schlafly began her campaign in 1972, public polls showed support for the amendment was widely popular and thirty states had ratified the amendment by 1973. Congress first proposed 12 amendments on September 25, 1789, and the states ratified 10 of them, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, on December 15, 1791.REF The states have ratified 26 of the 27 amendments in an average of 20 months.REF The 27th, also known as the Madison Amendment, was ratified on May 7, 1992, nearly 203 years after Congress proposed it. It failed in those states because both houses of a state's legislature must approve, during the same session, in order for that state to be deemed to have ratified. Twenty-five states have adopted constitutions or constitutional amendments providing that equal rights under the law shall not be denied because of sex. In 1959, they had it introduced in the Texas Senate and House as the Texas Equal Legal Rights Amendment. On June 21, 2009, the National Organization for Women decided to support both efforts to obtain additional state ratifications for the 1972 ERA and any strategy to submit a fresh-start ERA to the states for ratification.[171]. On September 25, 1921, the National Woman's Party announced its plans to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to guarantee women equal rights with men. [6] Many labor feminists also opposed the ERA on the basis that it would eliminate protections for women in labor law, though over time more and more unions and labor feminist leaders turned toward supporting it. Has your state NOT ratified the ERA? [194] On March 22, 2012, the 40th anniversary of the ERA's congressional approval, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Maryland) introduced (S.J. The text of the measure can be read here. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. This fictional distinction has no legal or logical basis.REF Third, they posit that if Congress has authority to change a ratification deadline in a proposed constitutional amendment before that deadline passes, it can do so long afterward.REF Two scholars offered this answer: If the first [deadline] extension was like adding an extra quarter to benefit the losing team in a football game, allowing ratification efforts to resumeafter ERAs apparent defeat is like authorizing the losing team to continue a game after the winning team has left the stadium.REF Fourth, ERA advocates incorrectly claim that Congress has plenary authority over the entire constitutional amendment process, when Congress actual authority is limited to proposing amendments and designating their method of state ratification. [39] Peterson referred to the National Woman's Party members, most of them veteran suffragists and preferred the "specific bills for specific ills" approach to equal rights. And they incorrectly posit that Congress has complete, plenary authority over the entire constitutional amendment process. [60] The 1879 Constitution of California contains the earliest state equal rights provision on record. [151], At the 1980 Republican National Convention, the Republican Party platform was amended to end its support for the ERA. [162] Such supporters argued that while the public face of the anti-ERA movement was Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP ERA organization, there were other important groups in the opposition as well, such as the powerful National Council of Catholic Women, labor feminists[verification needed] and (until 1973) the AFLCIO. In 1893, the fair featured a woman's congress of over 300 women. In 2018, the Republican Party of Texas called on the Legislature to clarify that the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment was valid only through March 22, 1979. Lawmakers have not taken up the matter. When the 115th Congress adjourned, however, bills introduced but not enacted expired. After Republicans took over control of both chambers, they did not move to revoke that ratification as a handful of other GOP-led states have. Addressing the validity of the 1972 ERAs ratification deadline begins by determining whether Congress has authority to set any ratification deadline when it proposes a constitutional amendment.REF Congress has long believed that it does. Congress itself disagrees. They ignore the crucial distinction between proposed constitutional amendments that include a ratification deadline and those that do not. 17, 117th Congress, 1st Session", "House passes joint resolution to remove ERA deadline", "S.J.Res.1 - A joint resolution removing the deadline for the ratification of the equal rights amendment", "VoteERA.org Equal Rights Amendment Women's Full Equality", "Equal Rights Amendment now official in the Delaware State Constitution | The Latest from WDEL News", "Does the U.S. Constitution Need an Equal Rights Amendment? It is the duty of the Attorney General to defend and support our Legislature. 79 on February 13, 2020, by a vote of 232183, which was mostly along party lines though five Republicans joined in support. In Coleman, the issue was whether the courts had authority to override Congress judgment about whether the time between an amendments proposal and ratification was reasonable. 2 on March 1, 1979. By January 1977, 35 states had ratified it and five of those states had rescinded their ratification. [179][180], An effort to ratify the ERA in the Virginia General Assembly in 2018 failed to reach the floor of either the House of Delegates or Senate. [22] Alice Paul and her National Woman's Party asserted that women should be on equal terms with men in all regards, even if that means sacrificing benefits given to women through protective legislation, such as shorter work hours and no night work or heavy lifting. [47] Said Betty Friedan of the strike, "All kinds of women's groups all over the country will be using this week on August 26 particularly, to point out those areas in women's life which are still not addressed. Similarly, if Congress had authority to amend or repeal the 1972 ERAs ratification deadline after sending it to the states, Congress had to act while the measure was actually pending, that is, before it expired with the passage of the ratification deadline.REF. The OLC opinion stated on this point that if congressional promulgation is requiredthe executive branch would have illegally certified every [constitutional] amendment except the Fourteenth.REF Congress has no authority to determine whether the 1972 ERA can still become part of the Constitution now that its ratification deadline has expired. . It was the location of the Texas State Fair. [51][52] Griffiths's joint resolution was then adopted by the Senatewithout changeon March 22, 1972, by a vote of 84 yeas, 8 nays and 7 not voting. The 1972 ERA, therefore, can no longer be ratified because it no longer exists. Rather, it ignores the distinction between when a ratification deadline is in the future and when it has already passed. For example, the official tally of ratifying states for the 14thAmendment in 1868 by both the Secretary of State and Congress included New Jersey and Ohio, states which had passed resolutions to rescind their ratifications. Similarly, in Coleman v. Miller,REF the Court discussed whether a proposed amendment had been ratified within a reasonable period of time.REF Neither of these decisions treatment of this issue is relevant to the 1972 ERA. This is why the CRS was correct to conclude that the 1972 ERA formally died on June 30, 1982.. 39)which is worded with slight differences from Representative Baldwin's (H.J. Delegates to state Constitutional Conventions in 1868-69 and 1875 debated and rejected resolutions to amend the Texas Constitution to enfranchise women. However, no additional states ratified. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. [citation needed] The decision caused some union Democrats and social conservatives to leave the organization and form the Women's Equity Action League (within a few years WEAL also endorsed the ERA), but the move to support the amendment benefited NOW, bolstering its membership. [135] On June 6, 1982, NOW sponsored marches in states that had not passed the ERA including Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. It would be a disservice to the citizens of South Dakota to ignore this obligation of my office. How to run for office | If a ratification deadline placed in a joint resolutions proposing clause is valid, the 1972 ERA formally died on June 30, 1982. It would, therefore, no longer be pending before the states and no amendment would exist today for additional states to ratify. [173] In 2013, ERA Action began to gain traction with this strategy through their coordination with U.S. Political scientist Jane Mansbridge in her history of the ERA argues that the draft issue was the single most powerful argument used by Schlafly and the other opponents to defeat ERA. [201] The House passed H.J. 208), by which the 92nd Congress proposed the amendment to the states, was prefaced by the following resolving clause: Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress: [emphasis added], As the joint resolution was passed on March 22, 1972, this effectively set March 22, 1979 as the deadline for the amendment to be ratified by the requisite number of states. Judie Gammage, Quest for Equality: An Historical Overview of Women's Rights Activism in Texas, 18901975 (Ph.D. dissertation, North Texas State University, 1982). [1][2], Election results via: Legislative Reference Library of Texas. On December 23, 1981, a federal district court, in the case of Idaho v. Freeman, ruled that the extension of the ERA ratification deadline to June 30, 1982 was not valid, and that ERA had actually expired from state legislative consideration more than two years earlier on the original expiration date of March 22, 1979. Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) introduced the amendment symbolically at the end of the 111th Congress and has supported it in the 112th Congress. 10), Kentucky (March 17, 1978: House [Joint] Resolution No. [1] [2] Election results If Congress wants to pass an updated version of the ERA, taking into consideration all the changes in the law since 1972, I have no doubt the South Dakota Legislature would debate the merits in a new ratification process. With the rise of the women's movement in the United States during the 1960s, the ERA garnered increasing support, and, after being reintroduced by Representative Martha Griffiths in 1971, it was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on October 12, 1971, and by the U.S. Senate on March 22, 1972, thus submitting the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification, as provided by Article V of the U.S. Constitution. During the 1975 legislative session, a statewide coalition of women's organizations returned to lobby the legislature when ERA opposition groups tried to have the Texas ERA rescinded. [8][9] In 2017, Nevada became the first state to ratify the ERA after the expiration of both deadlines,[10] and Illinois followed in 2018. The first involves continued introduction of fresh-start proposals,REF new joint resolutions for proposing the ERA and sending it to the states. First, ERA advocates want to ignore the district courts decision because the Supreme Court vacated it without offering a substantive decision of its own. She also claimed that laws to protect women in the workforce from unsafe working conditions would be needed by men, too, and thus the ERA would help all people. [34] The ERA was supported by Southern Democrats and almost all Republicans. Between 1972 and 1982, ERA supporters held rallies, petitioned, picketed, went on hunger strikes, and performed acts of civil disobedience. A majority of state constitutions have gender equality provisions. [102][103], On December 16, 2019, the states of Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota sued to prevent further ratifying of the Equal Rights Amendment. Ballot measures, Who represents me? Congress, of course, can conclude anything it wishes, including whether a proposed constitutional amendment has been properly ratified. The lieutenant governor of Kentucky, Thelma Stovall, who was acting as governor in the governor's absence, vetoed the rescinding resolution. [196][197] House Memorial No. Meanwhile, Congress passed the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act and a federal equal rights amendment, the latter of which was ratified by the Texas legislature in a special session in March 1972. [125] Oral arguments were held on September 28, 2022,[126] before a panel composed by judges Wilkins, Rao and Childs.[127]. "[106] The OLC argued in part that Congress had the authority to impose a deadline for the ERA and that it did not have the authority to retroactively extend the deadline once it had expired. [189], At the start of the 112th Congress on January 6, 2011, Senator Menendez, along with representatives Maloney, Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin), held a press conference advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment's adoption. 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