Federal judge dismisses suit seeking recognition of Virginia’s vote to ratify ERA News
dcandau / Pixabay
Federal judge dismisses suit seeking recognition of Virginia’s vote to ratify ERA

Judge Rudolph Contreras of the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday dismissed a lawsuit from Nevada, Illinois and Virginia that sought government recognition of Virginia’s vote to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Contreras ruled that the deadline to pass the amendment had passed.

The ERA was first proposed in 1972 to prevent the denial or abridgement of equal rights because of sex. Virginia voted to ratify the ERA in January 2020, making it the thirty-eighth state to ratify the amendment. This satisfied the 3/4 majority of states required by Article V of the Constitution.

However, the deadline for ratification of the ERA was in 1982, which was 10 years after it was sent by Congress to the states. Because of this, the National Archives, which is the agency charged with certifying amendments to the Constitution, would not certify the ERA. As the last three states to ratify the amendment, Nevada, Illinois and Virginia challenged this refusal.

Contreras found Friday that the archives’ publication and certification of the amendment were simply formalities that had no legal effect. Because this caused no concrete injury to the states, they lacked standing to sue. Additionally, even if they did have standing, Congress had set deadlines for ratifying the ERA that passed decades ago.

Contreras reasoned that the Archivist has authority to examine the amendment before publishing it to ensure that it has been adopted according to the Constitution’s provisions. Congress had authority under Article V to set a ratification date, which was not met. Therefore, the ratification deadline was effective, and it barred the plaintiffs’ late ratifications.

Because of this, the judge dismissed the lawsuit.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.