Fifty years ago, Congress approved a joint resolution proposing a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution, commonly referred to as the “Equal Rights Amendment (ERA),” stating that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Under the conditions set by Congress, the ERA needed to be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 states) within ten years of the enactment of the joint resolution. Thirty-five states subsequently ratified the amendment within that deadline, three short of the number needed to add the ERA to the Constitution.
Despite that setback, ERA proponents have not relented on their push for ratification, and in the last five years three more states – Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia – have voted to ratify the amendment, outside the deadline set by Congress but nevertheless bringing the total that have at one time or another voted to ratify to the three-fourths needed. At the same time, however, at the urging of ERA opponents, five of the states that voted to ratify the amendment – Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Tennessee – have since rescinded their ratification approval.
If this all sounds a bit confusing, it won’t surprise you that the issue of whether the ERA has been ratified has ended up in court, where the litigation continues to play out. In the most recent development surrounding the ratification question, the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has weighed in with an opinion, though probably not as advocates had hoped.
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