Nevada AG joins national push to add ERA to U.S. Constitution

Nevada Attorney General (AG) Aaron Ford and his counterparts in Virginia and Illinois recently filed suit to have the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) added as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. At its core, the ERA would prohibit sex discrimination and declare that women have equal rights under the law. The legal action arose after the Virginia General Assembly's historic January 2020 vote to become the 38th state to ratify the amendment, giving it—ostensibly—the required approval of two-thirds of the 50 state legislatures to be formally adopted into the constitution. The AGs' lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to force the federal government to recognize the approval.

ERA's path through history

The ERA—which was first proposed nearly 100 years ago, in 1923—may still have an uphill climb to become formally ratified. The amendment states in relevant part that the “equality of all rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Through 1977, the ERA had received 35 of the required 38 state ratifications and seemed destined to gather the necessary support by the original ratification deadline (1979). Shortly thereafter, however, and following mobilized political opposition to the amendment, five state legislatures voted to revoke their ratification. Forty-two years later, with Nevada ratifying the amendment in 2017 and Illinois and Virginia following thereafter, it seems the once-doomed ERA has been given new life.