Editing Equal Rights Amendment (section)

== Ratification deadline and extension ==

=== Congressional action ===
The original joint resolution ({{usbill|92|HJRes|208}}), by which the [[92nd United States Congress|92nd Congress]] proposed the amendment to the states, was prefaced by the following resolving clause:

{{blockquote|Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States ''within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress'': [emphasis added]}}

As the joint resolution was passed on March 22, 1972, this effectively set March 22, 1979, as the deadline for the amendment to be ratified by the requisite number of states. However, the 92nd Congress did not incorporate any time limit into the body of the actual text of the proposed amendment, as had been done with a number of other proposed amendments.<ref>See Section 3 of the [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Eighteenth Amendment]]; Section 6 of the [[Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twentieth Amendment]], Section 3 of the [[Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twenty-first Amendment]], Section 2 of the [[Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twenty-second Amendment]], and Section 4 of the rejected [[District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment]].</ref>

In 1978, as the original 1979 deadline approached, the [[95th United States Congress|95th Congress]] adopted {{usbill|95|HJRes|638}}, by Representative [[Elizabeth Holtzman]] of [[New York (state)|New York]] (House: August; Senate: October 6; signing of the President: October 20), which purported to extend the ERA's ratification deadline to June 30, 1982.<ref>{{USStat|92|3799}}</ref> H.J.Res. 638 received less than two-thirds of the vote (a [[Majority|simple majority]], not a [[supermajority]]) in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; for that reason, ERA supporters deemed it necessary that H.J.Res. 638 be transmitted to then-President [[Jimmy Carter]] for signature as a safety precaution. The [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] ruled in ''[[Hollingsworth v. Virginia]]'' (1798)<ref name="Hollingsworth v. Virginia volume=3 page=378 year=1798">{{ussc|name=Hollingsworth v. Virginia|volume=3|page=378|year=1798|reporter=Dall.|reporter-volume=3}}</ref> that the [[President of the United States]] has no formal role in the passing of constitutional amendments. Carter signed the joint resolution, although he noted, on strictly procedural grounds, the irregularity of his doing so given the Supreme Court's decision in 1798. During this disputed extension of slightly more than three years, no additional states ratified or [[List of rescissions of Article V Convention applications|rescinded]].

[[File:Photograph of Jimmy Carter Signing Extension of Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Ratification, 10-20-1978.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|President Carter signing {{usbill|95|HJRes|638}} on October 20, 1978]]
The purported extension of ERA's ratification deadline was vigorously contested in 1978 as scholars were divided as to whether Congress actually has authority to revise a previously agreed-to deadline for the states to act upon a constitutional amendment. On June 18, 1980, a resolution in the Illinois House of Representatives resulted in a vote of 102–71 in favor, but Illinois' internal parliamentary rules required a three-fifths majority on constitutional amendments and so the measure failed by five votes. In 1982, seven female ERA supporters, known as the [[Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens]], went on a fast known as [[Women Hunger for Justice]] and seventeen chained themselves to the entrance of the Illinois Senate chamber.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Si6ZVqdOqIgC|title=From Suffrage to the Senate: An Encyclopedia of American Women in Politics |volume=1|last=O'Dea|first=Suzanne|year=1999|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-0-87436-960-1|page=244}}</ref><ref name="hungryheart">{{Cite book|url=http://www.lunesoleilpress.com/the-hungry-heart-a-womans-fast-for-justice.html|title=The Hungry Heart: A Woman's Fast for Justice|last=Nicholson|first=Zoe Ann|year=2004|publisher=Lune Soleil Press|isbn=0-9723928-3-1|access-date=September 18, 2016|archive-date=September 19, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160919074200/http://www.lunesoleilpress.com/the-hungry-heart-a-womans-fast-for-justice.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="nytimes-era">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/24/us/women-say-they-ll-end-fast-but-not-rights-fight.html|title=Women say they'll end fast but not rights fight|last=Sheppard|first=Nathaniel|date=June 24, 1982|work=The New York Times|access-date=September 18, 2016}}</ref> [[Sonia Johnson]], [[Zoe Nicholson]] and Sister [[Maureen Fiedler|Maureen Feidler]] all participated in the fast.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-01-06 |title=How a Long Beach social justice activist went on a journey to reunite with her mentor 40 years after they fasted for the ERA |url=https://www.presstelegram.com/how-a-long-beach-social-justice-activist-went-on-a-journey-to-reunite-with-her-mentor-40-years-after-they-fasted-for-the-era/ |access-date=2024-04-20 |website=Press Telegram |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=2024-02-23 |title=Women End 37-Day Fast for ERA in Illinois |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/06/24/women-end-37-day-fast-for-era-in-illinois/283fae32-4998-4820-b750-3130880eebed/ |access-date=2024-04-20 |newspaper=Washington Post |language=en-US |issn=0190-8286}}</ref> The closest that the ERA came to gaining an additional ratification between the original deadline of March 22, 1979, and the revised June 30, 1982, expiration date was when it was approved by the [[Florida House of Representatives]] on June 21, 1982. In the final week before the revised deadline, that ratifying resolution, however, was defeated in the [[Florida Senate]] by a vote of 16 to 22. Even if Florida had ratified the ERA, the proposed amendment would still have fallen short of the required 38. Many ERA supporters mourned the failure of the amendment. For example, a [[jazz funeral for the ERA]] was held in New Orleans in July 1982.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Newcomb College ERA Jazz Funeral, 1982 |website=Tulane University Digital Library |url=https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:78535 |access-date=2022-07-24}}</ref>

According to research by Jules B. Gerard, professor of law at [[Washington University in St. Louis]], of the 35 legislatures that passed ratification resolutions, 24 of them explicitly referred to the original 1979 deadline.<ref>Letter to House Judiciary Committee, June 14, 1978</ref>{{verify inline|reason=Letters are usually not [[WP:V|verifiable]]. Was this published? If so, how/where?|date=January 2025}}

=== Lawsuit regarding deadline extension ===
On December 23, 1981, a federal district court, in the case of ''Idaho v. Freeman'',<ref>[https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/districtcourts/FSupp/478/33/1898956/ ''State of Idaho v. Freeman''], 478 F. Supp. 33 (D. Idaho 1979), via ''Justia''.</ref> ruled that the extension of the ERA ratification deadline to June 30, 1982, was not valid, and that the ERA had actually expired from state legislative consideration more than two years earlier on the original expiration date of March 22, 1979.<ref name="Freeman">{{Cite news |url=https://www.leagle.com/decision/19811636529fsupp110711473|title=''State of Idaho v. Freeman'', 529 F.Supp. 1107 (1981) |pages=1107–11473<!--paragraphs?--> |work=Leagle|url-access=registration|access-date=April 16, 2018|language=en}}</ref> On January 25, 1982, however, the U.S. Supreme Court [[Stay of proceedings|stayed]] the lower court's decision.

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),<ref>[https://edge.sagepub.com/epsteinshort9e/student-resources/chapter-1-the-living-constitution/now-v-idaho-1982 ''NOW v. Idaho'' (1982)], Edge.sagepub.com.</ref> vacated the federal district court decision in ''Idaho v. Freeman'',<ref name="Freeman"/> which, in addition to declaring March 22, 1979, as ERA's expiration date, had upheld the validity of state rescissions. The Supreme Court declared these controversies [[Mootness|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".<ref name="ef-nvi">{{Cite news |url=http://www.foavc.org/01page/Articles/WarrenBurgerLetter/NOW%20v.%20Idaho_459%20U.S.%20809_1982.pdf|title=NOW v. Idaho|access-date=May 13, 2020|publisher=Friends of the Article V Convention|language=en}}</ref><ref>[http://www.eagleforum.org/era/now-v-idaho-memo.html Memorandum of Gerald P. Carmen, Administrator of General Services], July 1982, via [[Eagle Forum]].</ref>

In the 1939 case of ''[[Coleman v. Miller]]'', the Supreme Court ruled that if there was not a deadline by which the proposed amendment had to be acted upon by the requisite three-fourths of state legislatures or state ratifying conventions, then the proposed amendment remains. The court also ruled that it is in the discretion of Congress to arbitrate whether at least three-fourths of the states have ratified that amendment.