Is the Equal Rights Amendment about to become law? Not so fast, GOP attorneys say

Virginia has moved even closer to becoming the final state needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

But big hurdles remain before it could be added to the Constitution, including a lawsuit by Republican attorneys general.

The proposed amendment would establish that “men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction” and that Congress had the power to “enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

The ERA passed the newly-Democratic Virginia House and Senate with bipartisan support Wednesday with a 59-41 vote in the House and 28-12 vote in the Senate, according to the Associated Press.

Still, opponents say the time for ratifying the amendment has come and gone.

History of the Equal Rights Amendment

First introduced in Congress in 1923, supporters tried and failed over the years to push the proposal forward, until it finally went before a vote in Congress in 1946. It failed to pass the Senate that year, and later flopped in the House in 1950 and 1953.

The ERA found new life decades later in 1970, but again failed to get a final Senate vote. It didn’t get support from both the Senate and House until 1972.

At the time, the ERA had a proposing clause that said, “the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States” must ratify the amendment “within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress.” That set the deadline as 1979.

Congress extended the deadline in 1978 by three years with support from President Jimmy Carter. But it failed to get support from enough states. Advocates have now revived the effort, saying that either Congress could retroactively cancel the deadline or that the original deadline was invalid.

Argument against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment

Kelly Laco, press secretary for the Republican Attorneys General Association, told McClatchy News on Thursday that the Virginia legislature “must have forgotten” the deadline for adding the ERA to the Constitution expired almost 40 years ago.

“Luckily, Republican attorneys general filed a legal challenge to keep radical activists from illegally rewriting the United States Constitution and we are confident that they will prevail in court,” she said.

Laco is referring to a lawsuit filed by attorneys general in Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota last month. In a statement issued to McClatchy News, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said Democratic attorneys general were competing to “see who can be the most extreme.”

“Anybody who wants to amend our nation’s most important foundational document needs to follow the established rules and procedures, not take shortcuts and then bully and bulldoze until they get their way,” Landry said in the statement.

The Justice Department has also pushed back against efforts to ratify the proposed amendment.

In a memo issued last week, it said the only options available were for Congress to re-propose the amendment to the states or for both the House and Senate to approve a joint resolution removing the ERA’s original deadline.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has pushed back against the Justice Department’s argument, saying that women “deserve to have equality guaranteed in the Constitution.”