For Immediate Release: February 28, 2023
Contact: Ryan Hite, Communications Director
ERA Forces Failed to Prove the Congressional Deadline is Meaningless
Washington, D.C.: On the very day the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a hearing on the topic, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered yet another tough blow to the attempt to resurrect ERA. The Court found the request of Illinois and Nevada (who “ratified” ERA in meaningless show votes within the last several years), did not meet the burden of proof required to ignore Congress’s own set deadline in the 1972 amendment.
“This ruling is no surprise, and it confirms what courts and legal authorities have held over and over since the original battle over ERA over forty years ago,” said Ed Martin, president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles. “Congress has the authority to set deadlines in proposed constitutional amendments, and they did so in 1972 on the Equal Rights Amendment.
“Leftwing ‘experts’ can try to wiggle and squirm their way out from under that point, but it doesn’t change the legal fact of the matter. Even while this decision was delivered this morning in the D.C. Circuit, so-called constitutional scholars were desperately trying to twist facts and history in front of Congress. They have a powerful, political desire to insert the word ‘sex’ and convolute the Constitution, and it leads them to make illogical arguments, as was on full display this morning.
“No matter what nutty things they make up, there are two very clear facts that don’t go away. First of all, the 1972 ERA as passed is expired, legally dead, and Congress cannot simply change the date. Second, the only reason the proponents of ERA are making these fiery arguments over a simple date change is because they know that the Equal Rights Amendment is toxic and absolutely would not survive if it had to go through Congress and state ratification all over again. This sham resurrection of 1972’s Equal Rights Amendment must be put down once and for all.”
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