Court of Appeals on ERA Suit regarding Deadline – Columbia Law

The Court of Appeals ruled yesterday on State of Virginia, Illinois and Nevada Lawsuit to recognize their ratifications of the ERA.

Columbia Law’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law believes in summary “the court’s decision reaffirmed our position that Congress has the power to create, extend, and/or remove a deadline for state ratification of a proposed constitutional amendment, thus signaling that there are no legal impediments to Congress passing S.J.Res.4.” 

Illinois v. Ferriero is a lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of the last three states that ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)—Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia—asking the court to require that the ERA be officially published by the U.S.

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Bottom Line: Congress has the preeminent role under Article V to clear the path for the ERA.

The court noted from the outset that Article V leaves open difficult questions that result from the ratification process of proposed amendments, but one thing is clear: it affirmed Congress’s authority to determine the reasonable terms of ratification. This opinion, released during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the ERA on February 28, 2023, affirmed Congress’s constitutional authority under Article V to resolve legal issues within the ratification process, as it has done for nearly all of the previous amendments to the Constitution

Read the full opinion here:

https://gender-sexuality.law.columbia.edu/content/faq-court-appeals-decision-illinois-v-ferriero