Historical Misunderstandings and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment

Abstract

According to the Constitution's amending provision, Article V, the Equal Rights Amendment would become part of the fundamental law when ratified by three-fourths of the states, that is thirty-eight of the fifty. In approving the ERA, the Congress stipulated that ratification must be completed within seven years. Twenty states ratified within three months, thirty within one year. By March 1973, with only eight more ratifications needed, the ERA appeared a certain addition to the Constitution. But only five more states ratified during the next four years, and in that time an equal number of states sought to withdraw or, technically, rescind their endorsements. Vocal and influential opposition to the amendment arose, much of it expressed by women. From 1973 onward, anti-ERA forces held legislative majorities, although sometimes very thin ones, in fifteen mainly southern, mostly rural, states. Increasingly desperate ERA supporters sought seven years of additional time to ratify, and in 1978 won a thirty-nine month extension of the deadline. But not one more state ratified, and on June 30,