Joint Resolution Removing Deadline for Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment Comes After Nevada Legislature Ratified ERA in 2017

January 28, 2022 - WASHINGTON, DC – On Thursday, U.S. Senators Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) announced their co-sponsorship of a bipartisan resolution to remove the arbitrary deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to guarantee equality for women under the U.S. Constitution. Following decades of inaction, Nevada was the first recent state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 2017.

Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV)

“The Equal Rights Amendment would be the strongest and most durable protection against gender discrimination the United States has ever enacted, and an arbitrary deadline from Congress should not prevent us from fully securing women’s equality,” said Senator Rosen. “This bipartisan resolution would honor the Nevada Legislature’s ratification of the ERA in 2017, clear the way for this long-overdue amendment to become part of our Constitution, and ensure equal protection under the law for all women in Nevada and across the country.”

“Nevada ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in 2017 to protect everyone in America from sex discrimination, and it is long past time this was written into our Constitution,” said Senator Cortez Masto. “This resolution would remove the arbitrary deadline for ratification and finally recognize the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, ensuring equal rights for women.”

When Congress originally passed the ERA in 1972, it specified that the measure required ratification by three-fourths of the states within seven years. Congress later extended the deadline to 10 years, but ultimately only 35 out of 38 states had ratified the ERA by the 1982 deadline. Nevada became the 36th state to ratify the ERA in 2017, Illinois the 37th in 2018, and Virginia the 38th and final state required by the Constitution in January 2020.
Source: Senator Jacky Rosen