On February 28, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the ERA in preparation for a vote on S.J. Res. 4. The resolution purports to remove the ERA's ratification deadline.
The ERA included a ratification deadline of June 30, 1982. Between 2017 and 2020, the state legislatures of Illinois, Nevada, and Virginia voted to approve the amendment. In 2021, federal Judge Rudolph Contreras (appointed by President Obama) ruled that the deadline was constitutionally binding, and that it would be "absurd" for the Archivist of the US to certify the ERA. He wrote that the three approvals "came too late to count."
Contreras's decision was appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The court heard rulings on September 28, but a decision has yet to be announced.
The National Right to Life Committee also insists that the ERA cannot be revived by a resolution. “The phony ERA resuscitation measure will fail in both Senate and House,” said Douglas Johnson, director of the National Right to Life Committee’s ERA Project. “The measure is a cheap political gimmick that would have no legal effect even if it passed—Congress’s power to change the ERA Resolution ended a half-century ago.”
