It would be a disservice to the citizens of South Dakota to ignore this obligation of my office. 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. In 1974, Texas attorney general John Hill cited the Texas ERA when he struck down laws restricting the hours women could work, except in instances where they consented to such restrictions, since this benefit was denied male employees. Texas ratified the federal ERA on . Several states crafted and adopted their own equal rights amendments during the 1970s and 1980s, while the ERA was before the states, or afterward. 7 asking that the congressionally imposed deadline for ERA ratification be removed. -- Senate Vote #533 -- Mar 22, 1972", "The Art of Leadership: A Companion to an Exhibition from the Senatorial Papers of Birch Bayh, United States Senator from Indiana, 19631980", "H.J. Eleanor Roosevelt and most New Dealers also opposed the ERA. Sherilyn Brandenstein, Contemporary efforts to make the ERA part of the Constitution fall into two categories. Protest and opposition for the Equal Rights Amendment raged between 1972 and 1982. 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. Even if Florida had ratified the ERA, the proposed amendment would still have fallen short of the required 38. That amounts to a minimum of 100 votes in the House of Representatives and 21 votes in the Senate. Not a single additional state ratified the amendment during the deadline extension period, and five states had already rescinded their ratification. 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. 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. 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. 47) to remove the congressionally imposed deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. In the early history of the Equal Rights Amendment, middle-class women were largely supportive, while those speaking for the working class were often opposed, pointing out that employed women needed special protections regarding working conditions and employment hours. This is why the CRS was correct to conclude that the 1972 ERA formally died on June 30, 1982.. Advocates have taken several steps to implement this strategy. Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. Near the end of the 19th century two more states, Wyoming (1890) and Utah (1896), included equal rights provisions in their constitutions. The resolution passed the House of Representatives in 2020, but did not receive a vote in the Senate. As such, these decisions provide no support for ratifying an amendment after its ratification deadline has passed.REF. In the 2010s, due in part to fourth-wave feminism and the Me Too movement, there was a renewed interest in adoption of the ERA. The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry. By the 1870s, women pressured Congress to vote on an amendment that would recognize their suffrage rights. A brief history of ratification in the states. 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. The South Dakota Legislature ratified the ERA in 1973, but in 1979 passed Senate Joint Resolution 2 which required the ERA be ratified in the original time limit set by Congress or be rescinded. The Texas ERA passed on Nov. 7, 1972, with 2,156,536 votes in favor, 548,422 votes against. [186], The amendment has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since 1982. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.". After the disputed June 30, 1982, extended deadline had come and gone, the Supreme Court, at the beginning of its new term, on October 4, 1982, in the separate case of NOW v. Idaho, 459 U.S. 809 (1982), vacated the federal district court decision in Idaho v. Freeman,[97] which, in addition to declaring March 22, 1979, as ERA's expiration date, had upheld the validity of state rescissions. ", "July 9, 1978: Feminists Make History With Biggest-Ever March for the Equal Rights Amendment | Feminist Majority Foundation Blog", "Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens/Women Rising in Resistance: publications about, 1988-1992 | HOLLIS for", "Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, "For the Equal Rights Amendment" (10 August 1970)", "Fact-checking 'Mrs. 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. During the 65th Session of the Texas Legislature held January to June of 1977, bills were introduced in the House and Senate to recall Texas's ratification of the national Equal Rights Amendment. As the seven-year time limit for ratification approached in 1979, Congress and President Jimmy Carter controversially extended the deadline three years. [204][205] The companion bill, S.J.Res. 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. The amendment reads: 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. Ballotpedia features 393,618 encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. These provisions were broadly written to ensure political and civil equality between women and men. 208. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. The Supreme Court declared these controversies moot based on the memorandum of the appellant Gerald P. Carmen, the then-Administrator of General Services, that the ERA had not received the required number of ratifications (38) and so "the Amendment has failed of adoption no matter what the resolution of the legal issues presented here. However, Gus Mutscher, the new speaker of the House, refused to let it out of committee. Eventually, this resulted in feminist dissatisfaction with the Republican Party, giving the Democrats a new source of strength that when combined with overwhelming minority support, helped elect Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992 and again in 1996. Steinem blamed the insurance industry and said Schlafly "did not change one vote. 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. Revivification opponents caution ERA supporters against an overly broad interpretation of Coleman v. Miller, which, they argue, may have been be [sic] a politically influenced decision.[172]. How to vote | Discussion about whether to place a ratification deadline instead in the joint resolutions proposing clause began in 1932, when the House considered what would become the 20th Amendment.REF One reason suggested for the change was to avoid unnecessary cluttering up of the Constitution.REF. Three-fourths of the states needed to then agree to ratify it as a constitutional amendment, but it failed by a margin of three. 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. [199] The subcommittee heard testimony on the amendment and extension of the deadline on April 30, 2019.[200]. 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. "A Forgotten ERA: West Virginia Senate approves resolution to rescind Equal Rights Amendment ratification", "Buried Alive: The Reboot of the Equal Rights Amendment", "ArtV.1.2 Proposing a Constitutional Amendment", District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, "Women say they'll end fast but not rights fight", "Newcomb College ERA Jazz Funeral, 1982 | Tulane University Digital Library", "State of Idaho v. Freeman | 529 F.Supp. 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. Efforts to alter sex-based inequities in insurance regulations and wages continued at a slow pace during the economic recession of the 1990s. 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. The first proposed language read: Two years later, at the partys 1923 convention, NWP president Alice Paul proposed a simpler version of the ERA, which was introduced in Congress in December of that year:REF. Hurry, Early Registration for the 2023 Annual Meeting in El Paso ends soon. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-equal-rights-amendment. They felt that ERA was designed for middle-class women, but that working-class women needed government protection. "Section 2. A majority of states ratified the proposed constitutional amendment within a year. 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. The House voted to remove those amendments and approved the ERA by a vote of 35224 on October 12, 1972.REF The Senate Judiciary Committee reported the unamended language on March 14, 1972, and the full Senate approved it by a vote of 848 on March 22, 1972. The 115th Congress lasted from January 3, 2017, to January 3, 2019. if(document.getElementsByClassName("reference").length==0) if(document.getElementById('Footnotes')!==null) document.getElementById('Footnotes').parentNode.style.display = 'none'; What's on my ballot? Senators and Representatives not only to introduce legislation in both houses of Congress to remove the ratification deadline, but also in gaining legislative sponsors. America': Jill Ruckelshaus and Schlafly's evangelical allies", "Let's honor justices Ginsburg and O'Connor by passing the ERA", "Coalition and Control: Hoosier Feminists and the Equal Rights Amendment", "Statement by Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) on Equal Rights Amendment for Women, 1958 February 8", "Plan to omit rights amendment from platform brings objections", "Gloria Steinem calls out 'Mrs. This is an issue of following the rule of law, the rules that our founding fathers put into place to protect us from government making decisions without the consent or support of "we the people". [1] Congress has authority to set such a deadline, and its validity does not depend on whether the deadline appears in the resolutions proposing clause or the amendments text. First introduced to Congress in 1923 by suffragist Alice Paul, the proposed 27th Amendment to the U.S . 3, Getting to the National Archives in Washington, DC. 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. To sneak it into the Constitution through this illegal process would undermine the very basis for our constitutional order. Phyllis Schlafly was a key player in the defeat. Senior Legal Fellow, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion. The lieutenant governor of Kentucky, Thelma Stovall, who was acting as governor in the governor's absence, vetoed the rescinding resolution. It did not come to a vote in either chamber. The Texas Legislature ratified the Equal Rights Amendment during a special session on March 30, 1972. However, most recently, ERA Action has both led and brought renewed vigor to the movement by instituting what has become known as the "three-state strategy". [129][34][144][145][146], Opponents of the ERA focused on traditional gender roles, such as how men do the fighting in wartime. The measure provided that equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin. While the Court addressed only whether courts could adjudicate this narrow issue, ERA advocates attempt to turn it into a plenary power of Congress over the entire constitutional amendment process.REF, ERA advocates incorrectly claim that the Court in Coleman held generally that Congressdetermines whether the amendment has been ratified in a reasonable period of time.REF In fact, the Court distinguished between proposed amendments that, like the 18th Amendment at issue in Dillon, have a ratification deadline and those, like the Child Labor Amendment at issue in Coleman, that do not.REF The Court expressly limited its conclusion to proposed amendments for which the limit has not been fixed in advance.REF By fixing that limit in advance, as it did for the 1972 ERA, Congress has already made its determination about a reasonable ratification period. 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. Res. By January 1977, 35 states had ratified it and five of those states had rescinded their ratification. In 1978, as the original 1979 deadline approached, the 95th Congress adopted H.J.Res. The length of time between a constitutional amendments proposal by Congress and ratification by the states, therefore, is relevant only when a ratification deadline has not been fixed in advance., The Supreme Courts decisions in Dillon and Coleman, therefore, do not address the central issue raised by the current campaign to ratify the 1972 ERA. The joint resolution stipulated that South Dakota's 1973 ERA ratification would be "sunsetted" as of the original deadline, March 22, 1979. [201] The House passed H.J. WHEREAS, the adoption of the ERA will help to advance gender justice for women, girls, and gender-expansive . That distinction, however, is both constitutional and consequential. The State Bar of Texas entered the controversy after 1965 by promoting a law granting women rights to own and manage property independently from their husbands and another making the spousal duty of support reciprocal. As of April 30, 2019, the resolution had 188 co-sponsors, including Republicans Tom Reed of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. Between 1957 and 1959, she and several federation leaders toured the state stumping for the amendment. [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. [60] The 1879 Constitution of California contains the earliest state equal rights provision on record. 10), Kentucky (March 17, 1978: House [Joint] Resolution No. They also state that the ratifications ERA previously received remain in force and that rescissions of prior ratifications are not valid. Meanwhile, state-level equivalents aboundsome as comprehensive provisions of state constitutions that . However, experts and advocates have acknowledged legal uncertainty about the consequences of the Virginian ratification, due to expired deadlines and five states' revocations. Similarly, neither House nor Senate debates on the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, or twenty-sixth amendments observed the fact that the seven-year limitation had shifted to the resolving clause.REF Congress saw no significance whatsoever in the location of a ratification deadline. The Equal Rights Amendment ( ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. the Twenty-seventh amendment. The need for a contemporaneous consensus, however, might actually undermine the case for ratifying the 1972 ERA. This had the effect of formally proposing the amendment to the states for ratification.REF. In Texas, activism for woman suffrage surged and waned several times during the state's history. On June 28, 1919, the Texas legislature voted to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, the first southern state to do so. Although the amendment was introduced during every congressional session from 1923 until 1970, it almost never made it to a vote. As this Legal Memorandum will explain, advocates who claim that the 1972 ERA can still be ratified make four errors. [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? ", "Letter to Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, Chairman of the National Woman's Party", "Research Guides: American Women: Topical Essays: The Long Road to Equality: What Women Won from the ERA Ratification Effort", "News Today: A History of the Poor People's Campaign in Real Time", "A Brief History of the Equal Rights Amendment | ERA University", "GRIFFITHS, Martha Wright | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives", "TO PASS H.J.