The Senate on Thursday failed to advance a resolution that would have removed the 1982 deadline for ratification Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment was ratified by 38 states—the three-quarters needed to amend the Constitution—but few states voted to ratify it after the 1982 deadline.
The bill failed to advance on a 51-47 vote, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer changing his vote at the last minute, leaving it open to debate. The bill had two GOP sponsors, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, but it failed to win the support of any other Republicans.
All 51 members of the Democrats are not voting on the floor right now Sen. Dianne Feinstein is out While he is recovering from shingles. Republican Sen. Mike Lew of Utah was also absent from the vote.
This amendment would guarantee that “equal rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
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Republicans who oppose the ERA say they don’t believe it’s necessary, and others say it would raise legal questions about Congress’s authority to remove the authorization period.
The Democratic-controlled House in 2021 A resolution to extend the deadline passed by a vote of 232 to 183, with five Republicans joining all Democrats in voting for the legislation. But it failed to advance in an evenly divided Senate.
The ERA was first proposed in 1923, and it passed both houses of Congress in 1972, but it needed to be ratified by at least three-quarters of the states, or 38 states, to be added to the Constitution within seven years. The deadline was later extended to 1982, but only 35 of the 38 needed to ratify it.
Three more states have since given approval This, brings the total number to 38. But the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump argued that the deadline had passed and Congress would have to pass it again and it would have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states again.
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