Two of Northern Virginia’s three members of the U.S. House of Representatives now are signed on to a measure calling for the Archivist of the United States to certify the Equal Rights Amendment.
U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-8th) on June 25 added his name to a list of cosponsors that has now grown to 112 – all Democrats – for the non-binding resolution sponsored by U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.)
Beyer becomes the fifth member of Congress from Virginia to support the measure, joining U.S. Reps. Gerald Connolly, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer McClellan (who were sponsors when the measure originally was introduced in 2023) and Bobby Scott (who added his name in April). Neither U.S. Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-10th) nor the state’s Republican members have hopped aboard.
The Equal Rights Amendment had been introduced to Congress every session from 1923 to 1972, the year it was approved and sent out to the 50 states. Within a year, it had been ratified by 30 states, then stalled, and by the time the time limit for ratification placed on it by Congress had expired in 1979, it was three states short of the 38 needed for ratification. Congress extended the deadline to 1982, but that year came and went without any additional states taking action.
Since 1982, three states – Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018) and Virginia (2020) – ratified the measure, bringing the total to 38. But over the years, four states that had ratified it (Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho and Kentucky) voted to rescind their support. The South Dakota legislature, which had approved the amendment in 1973, later voted on a measure calling the extension of the deadline from 1979 to 1982 illegal.
Proponents of the amendment say the original time limit placed on the measure’s ratification, and states’ later revoking their ratifications, are not constitutionally valid. Whether any court actually would agree with them remains an unanswered question.
Given the legal morass, it’s questionable, perhaps doubtful, whether Virginia’s 2020 ratification has meaning more than symbolism. But symbolism still has its place, as was the case with the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
In 1920, the all-male Virginia legislature unceremoniously rejected ratification. At the time, Virginia was one of the few states that gave women no voting rights at all.
But in 1952, Virginia became the 41st state to ratify the amendment, even though its provisions had gone into effect more than three decades earlier.
Bush’s resolution currently sits in a House committee, where it likely will die in December when the 118th Congress fades into the history books.