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Congressional ______
SResearch Service
The Equal Rights Amendment: Close to
Adoption?
Jon 0. Shimabukuro
Legislative Attorney
July 2, 2018
Illinois' recent ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution has revived
questions about the potential for the amendment to be adopted. First presented to the states in 1972, the
ERA provides that [e]quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or any State on account of sex. 37 states have now ratified the ERA, and some supporters of the
amendment maintain that ratification by just one additional state could result in its adoption. After
ratification by one more state, the ERA will have been ratified by three-fourths of the states, as required
by Article V of the Constitution. Whether the ERA can be so adopted, however, is not entirely certain.
Questions concerning the expiration of Congress's original ratification deadline without approval by
three-fourths of the states, and the rescission of ratifications by five states between 1973 and 1978, would
likely have to be addressed before the ERA would be formally adopted.
Background. The power to amend the Constitution is established in Article V. Article V empowers
Congress to propose an amendment when two-thirds of both chambers deem it necessary, or, on the
application of two-thirds of the state legislatures, to call a convention for proposing an amendment. A
proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution when it is ratified by the legislatures of three-
fourths of the states or by conventions in three-fourths of the states. Following ratification by three-
fourths of the states, the Archivist of the United States is to identify the ratifying states and certify that the
amendment has become part of the Constitution.
While Article V provides for the proposal and ratification of constitutional amendments, it is silent with
regard to other procedural matters, such as the time period for ratifying such amendments. H. J. Res. 208,
which first proposed the ERA, was passed by the House and Senate in 1972 during the 92nd Congress. In
its proposing clause, H. J. Res. 208 provided that, for the ERA to be adopted, three-fourths of the states
would have to ratify the amendment within seven years from the date of its submission by the
Congress. In accordance with this provision, the ratification deadline became March 22, 1979, seven
Congressional Research Service
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