Illinois Attorney General issued the following announcement on Mar. 17.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul issued the following statement applauding the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of legislation to remove the deadline for ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment.
“I applaud the House of Representatives for taking this bipartisan step toward clarifying that the Equal Rights Amendment is the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. While I maintain that the deadline Congress initially proposed in a preamble to the ERA is not binding, the House’s action today eliminates confusion about the ERA’s validity.
“I encourage the Senate to act quickly to do the same, and we will continue to fight to ensure that equal rights for all individuals are enshrined in the Constitution.”
Illinois ratified the ERA in 2018. When combined with Nevada’s ratification in 2017 and Virginia’s ratification in January 2020, a total of 38 states have now ratified the ERA, passing the constitutional threshold required for the ERA to become the 28th Amendment.
Attorney General Raoul, with Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, filed a lawsuit in 2020 to ensure that the Equal Rights Amendment is acknowledged as the 28th Amendment, enshrining equal rights for women in the Constitution. Approximately 108 business groups, 95 advocacy groups and bar associations, and 21 states and the District of Columbia have filed amicus briefs supporting Raoul’s lawsuit. With the ERA, the U.S. Constitution provides an explicit guarantee of protection against discrimination based on sex.
Original source can be found here.