IN NEVADA, ALWAYS BET ON EQUALITY
Nevada is home to the most comprehensive state-level Equal Rights Amendment in the country. The amendment was approved by the Legislature in 2019 and 2021, and at the polls, more than 58% of voters said yes, making Nevada the first state to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT HISTORY
The federal Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced in 1923 by Crystal Eastman, an ACLU founder, and prominent suffragette Alice Paul, just three years after women attained the constitutional right to vote. From then on, the ERA was introduced in every Congressional session and underwent various changes in language until finally passing the House and Senate in 1972 with the required two-thirds majority vote.
It didn’t take ten years, but not in a good way: The ERA remains unpublished decades later.
For an amendment to become part of the Constitution, three-fourths of the states (38 out of 50) must ratify the amendment through state legislatures. Congress set a seven-year limit for the ERA to be ratified, and by the 1979 deadline, only 35 of the 38 states needed had ratified.
New legislation was introduced to extend the deadline and was passed by Congress, setting a new deadline in 1982. Unfortunately, no additional states ratified the ERA. The Equal Rights Amendment has been introduced in every session of Congress since 1982, and advocates in the 15 states that did not ratify called on state legislatures to do so.
In the 2010s, interest in adopting the ERA was reignited with feminists and civil rights advocates working to get three more states to ratify to reach the required 38 states, even though the deadline had passed.
Nevada became the first state to ratify the ERA since the expiration of both deadlines in 2017, bringing the number of ratified states to 36. The Silver State became a model for fighting back against hatred and discrimination in all forms and reignited a movement for the federal ERA.
Illinois followed course and ratified in 2018, followed by Virginia in 2020, bringing us to the required 38 states needed.
Now, it is up to Congress to remove the old ratification deadline. In 2011, legislation was introduced to remove the time limit Congress imposed on the ratification of the ERA. However, the resolution continues to fail and has been reintroduced every Congressional session since then.
CONGRESS: TAKE ACTION ON THE ERA
It’s a common misconception to think the Constitution explicitly guarantees that rights are equally protected regardless of sex. But this isn’t the case; the only right the Constitution specifically affirms equally between women and men is the right to vote.
If the federal Equal Rights Amendment were ratified into law, then it would guarantee equal protection against discrimination regardless of sex. The ERA would provide a clear standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination and a strong legal defense against regressive policies that attack women’s rights.
Preventing sex-based discrimination would protect people in a multitude of communities and occupations where this type of discrimination can be prominent. It also provides Congress the power to protect people from pay discrimination, crimes against women and girls, and crimes against LGBTQ+ people, and establishes a basis for protecting reproductive health care such as pre-and post-natal care, contraceptives, abortion access, and more.