1920: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution is fully ratified and published in the U. S. Constitution after suffragists fought and won women’s suffrage.
1921: After fighting for women’s suffrage and knowing that ending sex discrimination needs to be spelled out in the Constitution, Alice Paul, a prominent suffragist leader and founder of the National Women’s Party, partners with Crystal Eastman, a lawyer and founder of the ACLU, to begin drafting the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
1923: Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman introduce the ERA in Seneca Falls, New York – the birthplace of women’s rights. In its original form, the ERA reads: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
1923: The ERA is introduced in Congress by House Republican Daniel Anthony, the nephew of Susan B. Anthony, and Republican Senator Charles Curtis, both from Kansas. It is introduced in every Congress until 1972 when Congress sends the ERA to the states for ratification.
1940: The ERA is added to the Republican Party platform and is included in it every four years until 1980.
1943: Alice Paul rewrites the ERA to better reflect language in the 15th and 19th Amendments. Dubbed the Alice Paul Amendment, the proposed amendment reads as it does today: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
1944: The ERA is added to the Democratic Party platform, although the party remains divided over the amendment until congressional passage in 1972.
1949-1970: Emanuel Celler, a Democrat from New York and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, refuses to consider the ERA.
1958: President Eisenhower publicly supports the Equal Rights Amendment, even going as far as to ask Congress to pass it in 1958, making him the first president to do so. Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford all supported the ERA. Presidents Roosevelt did not and President Truman supported the “concepts” of a equality amendment.
1970: The ERA languishes for 50 years when Congresswomen Martha Griffiths (D-MI) and Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) with Republican Minority Leader Gerald Ford (MI) organize a discharge petition that that requires moving the ERA from the Judiciary Committee to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote. The ERA passes in the House, but fails to come to the floor in the Senate.
1971: The ERA is again introduced in the 92nd Congress and passes in the House with the required 2/3rd vote.
1972: The Senate passes the ERA with a 2/3rd vote and sends it to states for ratification with an arbitrary time limit of 1979; the time limit is not in the text of the ERA nor voted on by the states during the ratification process.
1979: The arbitrary time limit is extended by Congress to June 1982.
1982: The ERA falls three states short of the needed three-fourths states for ratification.
1992: The 27th Amendment on congressional compensation that first passed Congress in 1789 is ratified and enshrined into the Constitution. This gives momentum to an ERA three state strategy – a strategy to ratify the ERA in three more states to reach the necessary 38 states.
2017: Nevada ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment.
2018: Illinois ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment.
2020: Virginia ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment and becomes the needed 38th state to meet the requirements of Article V of the Constitution.
2020: The Archivist asks the Trump Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel for opinion on recognizing and adding the ERA into the Constitution. It concludes that Congress may not revive a proposed amendment after a deadline for its ratification has expired. A second Biden DOJ opinion comes to a difference conclusion. (See January 2022 below)
January 2020: Illinois v. Ferriero is a lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of the last three states that ratified the Equal Rights Amendment — Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia—asking the court to require that the ERA be officially published by the United States Archivist as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.
March 2021: The District Court dismisses the lawsuit on standing grounds, meaning that the three states had not shown that they suffered a legally recognized injury. The court reasons that the Archivist’s actions have no legal effect and, as such, the states were not harmed by the Archivist’s refusal to publish the ERA.
2021: The House of Representatives passes an ERA resolution removing the arbitrary time limit by a vote of 222-204; a resolution in the Senate is not considered.
January 2022: The Department of Justice issues a new opinion on possible Congressional action regarding ratification of the ERA and concludes: A 2020 opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel that addresses the legal status of the proposed ERA is not an obstacle either to Congress’s ability to act with respect to ratification of the ERA or to judicial consideration of questions regarding the constitutional status of the ERA.
January 2022: President Biden issues a statement saying: I am calling on Congress to act immediately to pass a resolution recognizing ratification of the ERA. As the recently published Office of Legal Counsel memorandum makes clear, there is nothing standing in Congress’s way from doing so. No one should be discriminated against based on their sex—and we, as a nation, must stand up for full women’s equality.
2022: The Supreme Court releases the Dobbs v. Jackson decision reversing 50 years of legalized abortion in all states under the long-standing precedent of Roe v. Wade. In the decision, the Court determines the right to abortion has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in the history of the US. Justice Thomas advises in future cases the Court should similarly reconsider its precedents in cases that protect the rights to contraception, consensual same-sex intimacy, and same-sex marriage.
January 2023: Identical joint resolutions are introduced in both houses of Congress to enshrine the ERA into the Constitution by recognizing ratification by 3/4th of the states regardless of the arbitrary time limit. House Joint Resolution 25 and Senate Joint Resolution 4 read:
“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That notwithstanding any time limit contained in House Joint Resolution 208, 92d Congress, as agreed to in the Senate on March 22, 1972, the article of amendment proposed to the States in that joint resolution is valid to all intents and purposes as part of the United States Constitution having been ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States.”
February 2023: Upon appeal by the Nevada and Illinois Attorneys General, in the case Illinois v. Ferriero, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirms the lower court’s decision and dismisses the lawsuit.
April 2023: Former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (1993-2023), the lead ERA sponsor before retiring, forms Sig4ERA.org with Hunter College students and women’s rights leaders. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is the first person to sign the national ERA petition.
April 2023: Senate Leader Schumer schedules a Senate vote on the ERA resolution, S. J. Res 4, that passes with 51 yes votes but falls short of 60 needed to override a filibuster. The ERA can be brought back at any time in the current congressional session by Schumer who votes against the cloture vote in order to reconsider Senate Joint Resolution 4.
July 2023: Representative Ayanna Pressley files a House Discharge Petition to ensure a floor vote on the House ERA resolution, House Joint Resolution 25. A handful of Republican signatures are needed in the House to trigger the ERA discharge petition that begins a process for a House floor vote. H. J. Res 25, has 215 co-sponsors and needs a total of 218 discharge petition signatures to compel a floor vote. If H. J. Res 25 passes, it can go back to the Senate for consideration before the end of the current 118th Congress.
Sources: Alice Paul Center, Congress.gov, Congressional Research Service, Finger Lakes Times, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, Library of Congress, US Capitol Visitor Center, US Department of Justice, Office of General Counsel.