Since Congress has taken no action to change the 1972 ERAs ratification deadline, the only way to do so is by ignoring that deadline altogether. Successful bills included one prohibiting sex-based discrimination in processing loan and credit applications and another disallowing husbands from abandoning and selling homesteads without their wives' consent. Congress has authority both to impose a ratification deadline and to designate a method of 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. A brief history of ratification in the states. 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. Texas Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The lieutenant governor of Kentucky, Thelma Stovall, who was acting as governor in the governor's absence, vetoed the rescinding resolution. Legislation could be introduced and amended at any time during this period. We need your support because we are a non-profit organization that relies upon contributions from our community in order to record and preserve the history of our state. [157] Mansbridge concluded, "Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believedrightly in my viewthat the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly's early and effective effort to organize potential opponents. [34][56] President Richard Nixon immediately endorsed the ERA's approval upon its passage by the 92nd Congress. In June 1966, at the Third National Conference on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C., Betty Friedan and a group of activists frustrated with the lack of government action in enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) to act as an "NAACP for women", demanding full equality for American women and men. [50], Griffiths reintroduced the ERA, and achieved success on Capitol Hill with her H.J.Res. If they have, congratulations! [110] On August 6, 2020, Judge Denise Casper granted the Archivist's motion to dismiss, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue to compel the Archivist to certify and so she could not rule on the merits of the case. "[98][99], In the 1939 case of Coleman v. Miller, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the final authority to determine whether, by lapse of time, a proposed constitutional amendment has lost its vitality before being ratified by enough states, and whether state ratifications are effective in light of attempts at subsequent withdrawal. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-equal-rights-amendment. Senator Ben Cardin (DMD), for example, has introduced joint resolutions stating that the ERA proposed in 1972 shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution whenever ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States.REF, Third, ERA advocates directly urge additional states to ratify the 1972 ERA, pointing to a 1997 article that, they say, presents the legal analysis for this strategy.REF This article asserts three propositions. [95], According to research by Jules B. Gerard, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, of the 35 legislatures that passed ratification resolutions, 24 of them explicitly referred to the original 1979 deadline.[96]. [note 1] With wide, bipartisan support (including that of both major political parties, both houses of Congress, and presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter)[5] the ERA seemed destined for ratification until Phyllis Schlafly mobilized conservative women in opposition. 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. This suggestion was unusual in Dillon because the 18th Amendment, at issue in that case, had a seven-year ratification deadline.REF The issue in Dillon was whether Congress had authority to include any ratification deadline, not whether the time between proposal and ratification met any particular standard. Representative Griffiths introduced House Joint Resolution 208 when the 92nd Congress convened and, this time, Judiciary Committee Chairman Celler did not block its consideration. [30], In 1950 and 1953, the ERA was passed by the Senate with a provision known as "the Hayden rider", introduced by Arizona senator Carl Hayden. Most of these provisions mirror the broad language of the ERA, while the wording in others resembles the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is difficult to argue that such a consensus lasted even to 1979the 1972 ERAs original ratification deadline. Every penny counts! On January 15, the Senate voted 2614 to approve the amendment and forward it to the House of Delegates, but it was defeated there in a 5050 tied vote; at the time, the Republican Party held one-seat majorities in both houses. [39] Ultimately, Kennedy's ties to labor unions meant that he and his administration did not support the ERA. Res. 79 on February 13, 2020, by a vote of 232183, which was mostly along party lines though five Republicans joined in support. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. Don't Look To The Courts", "Virginia Becomes Battleground Over Equal Rights Amendment", "Will Virginia be next to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment? Groups as varied as the Ladies Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Association of University Women endorsed ratification. In 1978, Congress passed (by simple majorities in each house), and President Carter signed, a joint resolution with the intent of extending the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982. [193] The resolution had 56 cosponsors. [46], In February 1970, NOW picketed the United States Senate, a subcommittee of which was holding hearings on a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18. First, ERA advocates falsely assert that Congress promulgated the Madison Amendment after assessing whether the amendment had lost its vitality through lapse of time.REF Michigan became the 38th state to ratify the Madison Amendment on May 7, 1992.REF On May 18, 1992, pursuant to statute,REF the Archivist certified that the Madison Amendment has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States.REF, Thereafter, the House and Senate passed resolutions recognizing the Amendment.REF House Concurrent Resolution 320, for example, declared that the Madison Amendment has been ratified by a sufficient number of the States and has become a part of the Constitution.REF Two Senate resolutionsREF declared that the Madison Amendment has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution. On their face, these resolutions recognize or memorialize what had already occurred. 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. The Equal Rights Amendment was written by Alice Paul (1885-1977), the founder of the National Woman's Party.. Born to a New Jersey family of Quakers who highly valued education, Paul studied at colleges and universities in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and earned an impressive number of degrees, including a Master's and doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, a law . Neither case involved a similar kind of amendment: Dillon involved an amendment with a ratification deadline in its text, while Coleman involved an amendment with no ratification deadline at all. A CRS report at the time stated the obvious: [I]f [the ERA] receives approval in the form of ratification by 38 States before June 30, 1982, the measure will become the [next] Amendment to the Constitution.REF, As Professor Grover Rees put it when analyzing the 1972 ERAs deadline extension: The entire caserests on a single contention: in 1972, when Congress forwarded to the states that sheet of paper containing the ERA and the time limit, the time limit was in the wrong place on the paper.REF Rather than establish this proposition, however, ERA advocates simply repeat this observation: When the time limit is in the proposing clause, however, as with the ERA, it is not part of the amendment and is not ratified by the States when they ratify the amendment.REF, The notion that states may ignore restrictions appearing in the joint resolutions proposing clause presents a problem that ERA advocates have never addressed. 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. Carter signed the joint resolution, although he noted, on strictly procedural grounds, the irregularity of his doing so given the Supreme Court's decision in 1798. Signup today for our free newsletter, Especially Texan. WHEREAS, the adoption of the ERA will help to advance gender justice for women, girls, and gender-expansive . In order to be added to the Constitution, it needed approval by legislatures in three-fourths (38) of the 50 states. 47). In the following decades, women marched, protested, lobbied, and even went to jail. During 1972, a total of 22 state legislatures ratified the amendment and eight more joined in early 1973. [149] Schlafly said passage of the amendment would threaten Social Security benefits for housewives. A majority of states ratified the proposed constitutional amendment within a year. South Dakota's 1979 sunset joint resolution declared: "the Ninety-fifth Congress ex post facto has sought unilaterally to alter the terms and conditions in such a way as to materially affect the congressionally established time period for ratification" (designated as "POM-93" by the U.S. Senate and published verbatim in the Congressional Record of March 13, 1979, at pages 4861 and 4862). Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Frances "Sissy" Tarlton Farenthold and Barbara Jordan between 1968 and 1972. By 1979, 35 states had done sobut then ratifications stalled. "[116] An en banc rehearing request was denied on January 4, 2022. Congress has no role in determining when a proposed amendment has been ratified, and the states cannot ratify an amendment after its deadline has passed. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law. [20], As a result, in the 1940s, ERA opponents proposed an alternative, which provided that "no distinctions on the basis of sex shall be made except such as are reasonably justified by differences in physical structure, biological differences, or social function." In Texas, activism for woman suffrage surged and waned several times during the state's history. [139] One prominent female supporter was New York representative Shirley Chisholm. The number of states ratifying it declined rapidly, from 30 in the first two years to only five in the next four years. The commission, composed largely of anti-ERA feminists with ties to labor, proposed remedies to the widespread sex discrimination it unearthed. Advocates claiming that the 1972 ERA can still be ratified today make several errors, such as failing to distinguish between types of constitutional amendments and misunderstanding congressional authority over the constitutional amendment process. . In 1957, the B&PW sent attorney Hermine D. Tobolowsky of Dallas to a Texas Senate committee hearing to testify for a bill authorizing married women to control property separately from their husbands. No political, civil, or legal disabilities or inequalities on account of sex or on account of marriage, unless applying equally to both sexes, shall exist within the United States or any territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof. This strategy, along with new women legislators' assistance, paid off. Since the Constitution was ratified in June 1788, nearly 12,000 amendments have been introduced in Congress,REF 33 have been proposed,REF and 27 have been ratified. [119] On March 10, 2020, the Plaintiff States (Virginia, Illinois and Nevada) filed a memorandum in opposition to the five states seeking to intervene. Instead, it looks toward a legal system in which each person will be judged on the basis of individual merit and not on the basis of an unalterable trait of birth that bears no necessary relationship to need or ability. Governor Ben Ramsey argued that women in his region preferred the protection of existing Texas laws to the equality authorized by the proposed amendment. accessed January 18, 2023, First, ERA advocates fail to distinguish between constitutional amendments, like the Madison Amendment, proposed without a ratification deadline and those, like the 1972 ERA, proposed with such a deadline. They do not purport to have any legal effect or to play any role in the Madison Amendment becoming part of the Constitution. In 1810, Congress proposed an amendment that would strip American citizenship from anyone who accepted a title of nobility from an emperor, king, prince, or foreign power. The last of 12 ratifying states did so in 1812. [34] The ERA was supported by Southern Democrats and almost all Republicans. Ballotpedia features 393,618 encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. [122] On March 5, 2021, federal judge Rudolph Contreras of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the ratification period for the ERA "expired long ago" and that three states' recent ratifications had come too late to be counted in the amendment's favor. In the United States, the fight for a federal Equal Rights Amendment has been a century in the making. [188], In 1983, the ERA passed through House committees with the same text as in 1972; however, it failed by six votes to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote on the House floor. By January 1977, 35 states had ratified it and five of those states had rescinded their ratification. "The ERA in South Carolina". They felt that ERA was designed for middle-class women, but that working-class women needed government protection. Eleanor Roosevelt and most New Dealers also opposed the ERA. It is unclear why ERA advocates advance this argument at all because it is entirely irrelevant to the current strategy for ratifying the 1972 ERA. The Equal Rights Amendment was conceptually simple; it would grant Congress the ability to enforce legal equality between men and women via an amendment to the constitution. On March 22, 2017, 45 years to the day after Congress passed the ERA, Nevada became the 36th state to ratify it. At the beginning of the 117th Congress, a joint resolution (H.J.Res. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.[17]. 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. Counties | Thomas Jipping is Deputy Director and Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, of the Institute for Constitutional Government, at The Heritage Foundation. When that Congress adjourns, all pending legislative measures expire. The Texas House and Texas Senate were run by Democrats at the time. [175][10][176], On March 22, 2017, the Nevada Legislature became the first state in 40 years to ratify the ERA. [185] Keeping to their word, they did so, with ERA ratification resolutions HJ1 and SJ1 being passed in their respective chambers on January 15, 2020, and being passed by each other on January 27. [25] The opposition to the ERA was led by Mary Anderson and the Women's Bureau beginning in 1923.

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