Here is the quandary for ERA advocates. if(document.getElementsByClassName("reference").length==0) if(document.getElementById('Footnotes')!==null) document.getElementById('Footnotes').parentNode.style.display = 'none'; What's on my ballot? [6] Opponents also argued that men and women were already equal enough with the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[150] and that women's colleges would have to admit men. [6] Women who supported traditional gender roles started to oppose the ERA. And they incorrectly posit that Congress has complete, plenary authority over the entire constitutional amendment process. The resolution must be adopted by a vote of at least two-thirds of the membership of each house of the legislature. [44], A new women's movement gained ground in the later 1960s as a result of a variety of factors: Betty Friedan's bestseller The Feminine Mystique; the network of women's rights commissions formed by Kennedy's national commission; the frustration over women's social and economic status; and anger over the lack of government and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Women spoke in favor of the resolutions before each convention. [191], The "New ERA" introduced in 2013, sponsored by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, adds an additional sentence to the original text: "Women shall have equal rights in the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. On June 18, 1980, a resolution in the Illinois House of Representatives resulted in a vote of 10271 in favor, but Illinois' internal parliamentary rules required a three-fifths majority on constitutional amendments and so the measure failed by five votes. 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. 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. [177], Illinois lawmakers and citizens took another look at the ERA, with hearings, testimony, and research including work by the law firm Winston & Strawn to address common legal questions about the ERA. By 1977, the legislatures of 35 states had approved the amendment. Cities | Why did the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 fail? They felt that ERA was designed for middle-class women, but that working-class women needed government protection. 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. [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. 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. [1] This document is being featured in conjunction with the National Archives National Conversation on Womens Rights and Gender Equality. Because the proposing clause is merely legislative, they argue, the time limit can be changed if Congress exercises its power to adjust, amend, or extend its own legislative action with new legislative action.REF This claim does not, as others do, ignore the distinction between proposed amendments that lack a ratification deadline and those that have one. Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. The Texas ERA passed on Nov. 7, 1972, with 2,156,536 votes in favor, 548,422 votes against. For example, a question of equality before the law; we are interested in 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. [60] The 1879 Constitution of California contains the earliest state equal rights provision on record. This play gets her life's work right", "The History Behind the Equal Rights Amendment", "Wanna Save Roe v. Wade? After 1973, the number of ratifying states slowed to a trickle. [166], The ERA has long been opposed by anti-abortion groups who believe it would be interpreted to allow legal abortion without limits and taxpayer funding for abortion.[167][168][169]. The first involves continued introduction of fresh-start proposals,REF new joint resolutions for proposing the ERA and sending it to the states. This leads to their claim that Congress was free to conclude that the Madison Amendment had been validly ratified and that after ratification by the thirty-eighth state, Congress may also conclude that the ERA has been validly ratified.REF This argument has several flaws. Since the President has no role in the constitutional amendment process,REF however, a joint resolution proposing an amendment is sent to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for publication and transmittal to the governor of each state.REF, States that ratify an amendment send authenticated ratification documents to the OFR which, in turn, notifies the Archivist of the United States when such documents are received from three-fourths of the states. [102][103], On December 16, 2019, the states of Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota sued to prevent further ratifying of the Equal Rights Amendment. During this disputed extension of slightly more than three years, no additional states ratified or rescinded. Ratification resolutions have also been defeated in Arizona, Arkansas,[85] and Mississippi.[86][87][88]. The following year, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned workplace discrimination not only on the basis of race, religion, and national origin, but also on the basis of sex, thanks to the lobbying of Alice Paul and Coretta Scott King and the political influence of Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan. [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. [38] When Kennedy was elected, he made Esther Peterson the highest-ranking woman in his administration as an assistant secretary of labor. ", "Nevada Ratifies The Equal Rights Amendment 35 Years After The Deadline", "Congressional Record September 12, 2018", "BREAKING: The House of Delegates just passed HJ1, my resolution to have Virginia be the 38th and final state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment", Virginia becomes 38th state to ratify Equal Rights Amendment but it may be too late, "Virginia Approves the E.R.A., Becoming the 38th State to Back It", "Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States", "WOMAN'S PARTY ALL READY FOR EQUALITY FIGHT; Removal Of All National and State Discriminations Is Aim. ", "2009 National NOW Conference Resolutions: Equal Rights Amendment", "The Equal Rights Amendment: Why the ERA Remains Legally Viable And Properly Before the States", "As women march in D.C., Cardin co-sponsors new Equal Rights Amendment", "Let's Ratify the ERA: A Look at Where We Are Now", "The ERA's Revival: Illinois Ratifies Equal Rights Amendment", "Illinois Senate approves federal Equal Rights Amendment, more than 35 years after the deadline", "Virginia could be the last state needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. [1] The first version of an ERA was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923.[2][3][4]. In its work titled The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation, the CRS states that the ERA formally died on June 30, 1982, after a disputed congressional extension of the original seven-year period for ratification.REF. 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 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was proposed to be the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when it was passed by Congress on March 22, 1972 and then forwarded to states for ratification. 208 took place in the mid-to-late afternoon in Washington, D.C., when it was still midday in Hawaii. [111] On August 21, 2020, the plaintiffs appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and on September 2, 2020, the plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to hear this case. Proposed amendment to the United States Constitution ensuring equal rights regardless of sex, Hayden rider and protective labor legislation, Non-ratifying states with one-house approval, Congressional extension of ratification deadline, Massachusetts lawsuit supporting ratification, 2020 U.S. District Court lawsuit supporting ratification, Post-deadline ratifications and the "three-state strategy", Proposed removal of ratification deadline, Article Five of the United States Constitution requires approval of three-fourths of the, The Texas Observer, March 11, 1977, "Sniping at the ERA," p. 5-6/. In 2013, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service issued a report saying that ratification deadlines are a political question: ERA proponents claim that the Supreme Court's decision in Coleman v. Miller gives Congress wide discretion in setting conditions for the ratification process. [138], Many African-American women have supported the ERA. 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. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark. Not a single additional state ratified the amendment during the deadline extension period, and five states had already rescinded their ratification. The state legislators in battleground states followed public opinion in rejecting the ERA.[156]. The OLC opinion explained why Coleman is not authority for this theory.REF Notably, this issue did not have the support of a majority of justicesREF and none explained the constitutional basis for the assertion that Congress had authority to promulgate an amendment.REF. [130] While at a discussion at Georgetown University in February 2020, Ginsburg noted the challenge that "if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said 'we've changed our minds? 208 of the 92nd Congress on March 22, 1972."[77] The resolution was formally received by the U.S. Senate on April 20, 2021, was designated as "POM-10", was referred to the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and its full and complete verbatim text was published at page S2066 of the Congressional Record. This Legal Memorandum analyzes the second category of efforts by ERA advocates, which attempt today to ratify the ERA that Congress proposed in 1972. They took homemade bread, jams, and apple pies to the state legislators, with the slogans, "Preserve us from a Congressional jam; Vote against the ERA sham" and "I am for Mom and apple pie. [34], At the 1944 Democratic National Convention, the Democrats made the divisive step of including the ERA in their platform, but the Democratic Party did not become united in favor of the amendment until congressional passage in 1972. 638, by Representative Elizabeth Holtzman of New York (House: August; Senate: October 6; signing of the President: October 20), which purported to extend the ERA's ratification deadline to June 30, 1982. Article V of the Constitution speaks only to the states power to ratify an amendment but not to the power to rescind a ratification. How to run for office | First, Representative Robert Andrews (DNJ) began in 1994 to introduce resolutions that would require the House to take any legislative action necessary to verify the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment when the legislatures of an additional three States ratify it.REF, Second, Members of Congress began introducing joint resolutions to repeal the ratification deadline in the 1972 ERA. [1] The measure provided that equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin. Res. '"[131][132], In the early 1940s, both the Democratic and Republican parties added support for the ERA to their platforms. They also state that the ratifications ERA previously received remain in force and that rescissions of prior ratifications are not valid. On January 25, 1982, however, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the lower court's decision. 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. The commission that she chaired reported (after her death) that no ERA was needed, believing that the Supreme Court could give sex the same "suspect" test as race and national origin, through interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. The ELRA gained passage in the Senate, but House members voted it down by a slim margin. 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. [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. The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution that passed both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. [196][197] House Memorial No. W075_029, Feminist Postcard Collection, Archives for Research on Women and Gender. When the Texas Legislature met in 1969, the proposed Texas Equal Rights Amendment received ready support in the Senate. These feminists argued that legislation including mandated minimum wages, safety regulations, restricted daily and weekly hours, lunch breaks, and maternity provisions would be more beneficial to the majority of women who were forced to work out of economic necessity, not personal fulfillment. This had the effect of formally proposing the amendment to the states for ratification.REF. [129], Later, Ginsburg voiced her opinion that the best course of action on the Equal Rights Amendment is to start over, due to being past its expiration date. The Congressional Research Service is correct. 39)which is worded with slight differences from Representative Baldwin's (H.J. However, the "Madison Amendment" was not associated with a ratification deadline, whereas the proposing clause of the ERA did include a deadline. On August 10, 1970, she gave a speech on the ERA called "For the Equal Rights Amendment" in Washington, D.C. Four of the six unratified amendments remain pending before the states because they were proposed without a ratification deadline. However, she never went so far as to endorse the ERA. The first constitutional amendment with a ratification deadline, the 18th Amendment, proposed in 1917, placed it in the amendments text. They create a baseless distinction between ratification deadlines that appear in an amendments text and in a joint resolutions proposing clause. The bill cleared the Legislature, and Texas voters approved the state ERA in a constitutional amendment election in November 1972. The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress on March 22, 1972 and sent to the states for ratification. In the early 1960s, Eleanor Roosevelt announced that, due to unionization, she believed the ERA was no longer a threat to women as it once may have been and told supporters that, as far as she was concerned, they could have the amendment if they wanted it. Texas ratified the federal ERA on . The seven-year ratification deadline appeared in the text of the amendment itself and, when that deadline passed with only 16 ratifying states, the amendment expired. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. The association assumed that passage of the new Family Code, which included these and related proposals, would prevent the need for a constitutional amendment. [11] In 2020, Virginia's General Assembly passed a ratification resolution for the ERA,[12][13] claiming to bring the number of ratifications to 38. Texas Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Some equal rights amendments and original constitutional equal rights provisions are:[60][207][208], The Southern Legal Council[209] found clauses officially declaring equal rights / non-discrimination on the basis of sex in the constitutions of 168 countries.[210]. [16], Paul named this version the Lucretia Mott Amendment, after a female abolitionist who fought for women's rights and attended the First Women's Rights Convention. 638 received less than two-thirds of the vote (a simple majority, not a supermajority) in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; for that reason, ERA supporters deemed it necessary that H.J.Res. Ballot measures, Who represents me? The 1st United States Congress sent the suggested amendment to the states for their approval on September 25, 1789. That was the last time that the ERA received a floor vote in either house of Congress. Illinois, which in 1972 helped block the Equal Rights Amendment, has a chance to correct that mistake. When the Texas Legislature met in 1969, the proposed Texas Equal Rights Amendment received ready support in the Senate. 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. [107], On February 27, 2020, the States of Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota entered into a joint stipulation and voluntary dismissal with the Archivist of the United States. Congress, of course, can conclude anything it wishes, including whether a proposed constitutional amendment has been properly ratified. The Supreme Court rejected this argument, holding that Congress authority under Article V to propose constitutional amendments includes the power, keeping within reasonable limits, to fix a definite period for the ratification.REF, If Congress has authority to set a ratification deadline for an amendment it proposes, the question becomes whether the particular deadline that Congress set for the 1972 ERA was valid.REF ERA advocates today claim it is not because, they say, Congress power is limited to impos[ing] reasonable time limits within the text of an amendment.REF. Groups on both sides of the issue mobilized to lobby the states for and against passage. [139] One prominent female supporter was New York representative Shirley Chisholm. Res. On November 8, 2019, Representative Jackie Speier (D-California) re-introduced the bill as H.J.Res. The Madison Amendment was pending indefinitely because it had no ratification deadline, while the 1972 ERA not only had a deadline, but that deadline, even after one extension, passed in June 1982. [34][56] President Richard Nixon immediately endorsed the ERA's approval upon its passage by the 92nd Congress. By the fall of 1977, 35 states had ratified the ERA and, by the March 1979 deadline, five of those states had passed resolutions rescinding their ratifications.REF On October 26, 1977, Representative Elizabeth Holtzman (DNY) introduced House Joint Resolution 638 to extend the deadline until June 30, 1982. Download the official NPS app before your next visit, Sources used to make these state pages include: Ida Husted Harper's. Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides for two methods of proposing amendments. Drawing a specific parallel with the legislative process can further clarify this point. Advocates ignore this difference by focusing instead on a supposed distinction between a textual time limitREF that appears in the proposed amendments text and time limits in a proposing clauseREF that appear in the joint resolutions text. By August of 1920, 36 states (including Texas) approved the amendment and it became part of the United States Constitution. 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. On August 22, 1978, Congress proposed and sent to the states an amendment that would give the District of Columbia the same Senate and House representation that states have. In 1893, the fair featured a woman's congress of over 300 women. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United Statesincluding former enslaved peopleand guaranteed all citizens "equal protection of the laws."