State House passes Equal Rights Amendment -- 95 years later
Source: Chicago Sun Times
SPRINGFIELD—The Illinois House made history on Wednesday, allowing for the state to become the 37th in the country to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment designed to protect Americans against discrimination based on their sex.
Nearly a century after the amendment was drafted, the Illinois House voted 72-45 to ratify it following more than two hours of debate. Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan stood behind the speaker’s podium in the House chambers to watch the historic vote. The Illinois Senate voted to approve it in April.
While the vote may be symbolic — the country needs one more state to ratify the amendment — the state’s passage creates a window of opportunity for the embattled constitutional amendment. The state is where the efforts seized in 1982. Only 35 of the necessary 38 states ratified the amendment before the 1979 deadline set by Congress. The deadline was extended to 1982, but that made no difference as Illinois and other states remained firmly against the proposal.
After the state Senate approved the ERA in April, Deputy Majority Leader Lou Lang and Republican state Rep. Steven Andersson, R-Geneva, took time to try to muster the bipartisan 71 votes needed to approve the constitutional amendment.
Lawmakers shared impassioned personal stories of their upbringings, their daughters and their lives in the military. Some argued it was moot to push for an amendment that was created in the early 20th century.
Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/working/dawn-of-an-era-state-house-passes-equal-rights-amendment-half-a-century-later/
We need this now more than ever! Especially with Orange Douche and the deplorables taking over!
= new reply since forum marked as read
95 years?.......
...........
March 21, 20173:34 PM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Updated at 10 a.m. ET Thursday
Nevada has ratified the Equal Rights Amendment — roughly 35 years after a deadline imposed by Congress. On Wednesday, the state Senate approved the long-dormant ERA, which among other things guarantees that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." The senators passed a measure sent to them by the state Assembly, which had already approved it earlier this week.
It has been a long, twisty path for the ERA, which was first passed by Congress in 1972 and last approved by a state (Indiana) in 1977. The amendment teetered just three states short of the threshold necessary to see it adopted into law nationwide — a threshold it failed to achieve by the time Congress' deadline came and went. But for ERA supporters such as Democratic state Sen. Pat Spearman, that deadline is little more than a paper tiger. "It was in the resolving clause, but it wasn't a part of the amendment that was proposed by Congress," she tells KNPR. "That's why the time limit is irrelevant."
After all, Spearman and others argue, Congress' original ratification deadline was 1979, and national lawmakers already bumped that forward to 1982 — so what's stopping them from bumping it forward again? "The Equal Rights Amendment is about equality, period," says Spearman, the Nevada bill's chief sponsor. A former Army lieutenant colonel and one of two openly gay senators in the Legislature, she says that regardless of timing, the goals of the amendment endure.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/21/520962541/nevada-on-cusp-of-ratifying-equal-rights-amendment-35-years-after-deadline
So the suggestion is that Congress could move the deadline forward again.... but another suggestion was that any "deadline" on an Amendment is arbitrary and not needed because there is no mechanism in the Constitution itself that actually requires a "time frame" for passage -
By David Montero
Mar 20, 2017 | 6:55 PM | Las Vegas
The ERA was first proposed in 1920s, but Congress didn't pass it until 1972. The key part of its text reads: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
Thirty-eight state legislatures needed to ratify the proposed amendment, but it fell short by three when the deadline expired in 1982. Many credit the defeat to the Eagle Forum, a conservative lobbying group, and its founder Phyllis Schlafly, who argued among other things that it would open women to being drafted into the military and combat.
Once the expiration date passed, groups such as the National Organization for Women adopted a "three-state strategy" in hopes of getting to the three-quarters goal needed for ratification. Some have suggested the 1982 deadline was arbitrary and believe Congress didn't have the power to set a deadline for passage.
Terry O'Neill, president of NOW, said she hoped Nevada's ratification would embolden some other states like Virginia and Illinois to follow the Silver State's lead. "Now it's a two-state strategy," she said. "It's very exciting. Over the past five years, Illinois and Virginia have come close. I think there is clear interest in this."
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nevada-era-2017-story.html
Of course the other side of the coin is that some states have or might rescind their votes all these years later so who knows....
BUT with this ratification by IL, the one state left mentioned in my linked articles that could put it over the threshold is VA, and that is certainly do-able given VA's shift to purple and continuing to move blue.
That's my own handy dandy internet acronym for
"I Cant Believe This Is Still Even Up For Discussion"!!!
I want to say more, but at the moment my mind is swinging between one profanity to another.
So many people are sleeping, so 
wake up!
Response to Initech (Original post)
I'm shocked that Virginia never ratified it. WTF?
I was living in New York when all this happened and everyone there thought it was a no-brainer. Nowadays I'm back in my home state of Pennsylvania and I'm happy that PA was also an early adopter of the ERA.
Maybe this Illinois action will breathe new life into the issue. It seems we liberals have a lot to be hopeful for this year. But we can't get sidetracked from our main task which is to TAKE BACK the CONGRESS this year.
