Virginia to ratify Equal Rights Amendment

When the Virginia General Assembly convened in January, ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution was at the top of the agenda. As stated in Section 1, the ERA guarantees: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Section 2 provides the enforcement mechanism by which “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

Since both the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates now have a Democrat majority, there is little doubt the ERA will be ratified before the legislative session closes in March. At that point, Virginia will become not only the 38th state to ratify the ERA, but also the final state to satisfy the required two-thirds majority needed to amend the U.S. Constitution.

Additional hurdles

Importantly, the General Assembly's anticipated ratification of the ERA doesn't necessarily mean we'll have a new constitutional amendment this year. There are at least two key hurdles to overcome:

Deadline. When a super majority of Congress passed the ERA in 1972, the legislation included a seven-year deadline for two-thirds of the states to ratify the amendment. By 1977, however, only 35 of the necessary 38 states had endorsed ratification.