The Deferred Dream of an Equal Rights Amendment

Newly empowered Democrats are likely to make Virginia the final state needed to ratify the long-dormant ERA.

Not often in American history does a single state election yield the ratification of an amendment to the Constitution — a task that is, by design, perhaps the most Herculean in the U.S. political system.

But that’s what Virginia’s voters may have done on Tuesday by sweeping Democrats into power in the state legislature for the first time this century. The party’s newly empowered leaders pledged during the campaign — and have reiterated in the days since — to quickly vote to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment when their majorities take office in January. If they do, Virginia would become the 38th and final state needed to sign off on a constitutional revision that was first proposed shortly after women won the right to vote but has, until recently, been dormant for decades.

The amendment fits on a single piece of paper and has a main clause with just 24 words: “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 movement for its passage began with a proposal from the suffragist Alice Stokes Paul in 1923, and its current wording dates to 1943.