Thirty-eight states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, the exact number the Constitution requires to add an amendment. The only thing standing in the way is a deadline Congress wrote into a preamble in 1972, not into the amendment itself. I am asking you to clear that obstacle.
The Equal Rights Amendment is one sentence: equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex. Alice Paul wrote it in 1923. Congress passed it in 1972. Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia pushed it over the 38-state line between 2017 and 2020. Yet the Archivist refuses to certify it, pointing to that expired deadline and to a 2020 Justice Department opinion that still stands.
This is not a fringe demand. About 30 states already bar sex discrimination in their own constitutions, and in 2024 New York voters approved a broad state equal-rights amendment with 62 percent of the vote. The public wants this protection written down where a future court cannot quietly erase it. Right now, the Constitution's sex-equality protections are not in the text at all. They come from a line of Supreme Court cases, which means the same Court can narrow them, the way it narrowed other rights it once recognized.
The cleanest fix is for Congress to pass a joint resolution declaring the 1972 deadline invalid so the 38 ratifications stand. House Joint Resolution 80 and its Senate companion would declare the ERA ratified regardless of that deadline. The House passed a deadline-removal resolution in 2021 before it stalled in the Senate.
Please co-sponsor and vote for House Joint Resolution 80 and its Senate companion, and if leadership will not schedule a vote, sign the discharge petition to force one. Tell me where you stand on recognizing the Equal Rights Amendment.
