89R12270 TBO-F

By: Lowe H.C.R. No. 57

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, On March 22, 1972, the 92nd Congress of the United States of America, during its 2nd Session, with the constitutionally-specified vote of two-thirds of both houses thereof, gave final approval to House Joint Resolution No. 208, commonly referred to as the "Equal Rights Amendment" (ERA), to propose that amendment to the Constitution of the United States, pursuant to Article V of that Constitution; and

WHEREAS, The exact text of the 1972 proposal reads as follows:

"ARTICLE __________

"SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

"SEC. 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

"SEC. 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."; and

WHEREAS, In offering that proposed federal constitutional amendment to America's state lawmakers, the 92nd Congress chose a deadline of seven years, or until March 22, 1979, for the constitutionally-mandated ratification of the amendment by three-fourths of the nation's state legislatures; and

WHEREAS, The authority of Congress to establish a ratification deadline within which state legislators--or ratifying conventions conducted within the states--must act upon a particular proposed amendment to the federal Constitution was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in the 1921 case of Dillon v. Gloss (256 U.S. 368); and

WHEREAS, In the form of Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1, 62nd Texas Legislature, 2nd Called Session, on March 30, 1972, Texas lawmakers responded by ratifying the proposed 1972 Equal Rights Amendment to the federal Constitution, thus making the Texas Legislature an "early ratifier" of the measure; and

WHEREAS, In its wording, Texas 1972 Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1 clearly references and alludes to the deadline of seven years which the 92nd Congress had established for ratification of the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment; and

WHEREAS, Quite belatedly, the legislatures of Nevada in 2017, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020, adopted resolutions purporting to "ratify" the 1972 ERA literally decades after the proposal had expired from state legislative consideration; and

WHEREAS, With those three post-deadline "ratifications," there are persons who mistakenly assert that the 1972 ERA received the approval of the legislatures of the necessary 38 of the 50 states and, therefore, that the 1972 ERA has allegedly been incorporated into the United States Constitution as the document's 28th Amendment; and

WHEREAS, In the aftermath of the Virginia General Assembly's 2020 "ratification" of the 1972 ERA, the United States House of Representatives has twice adopted joint resolutions (House Joint Resolution No. 79 of the 116th Congress and House Joint Resolution No. 17 of the 117th Congress) both of which sought to remove the original deadline set by the 92nd Congress for ERA ratification; neither of those two joint resolutions, however, were voted upon by the United States Senate during the now-concluded 116th and 117th Congresses; and

WHEREAS, On January 17, 2025, the 46th President of the United States--no longer in office--issued an erroneous proclamation to the effect that the 1972 ERA "has cleared all necessary hurdles to be formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment" and declared that "the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution" and that action was in direct contravention of the United States Supreme Court's 1798 decision in the case of Hollingsworth v. Virginia (3 U.S. [3 Dall.] 378 [1798]) in which it was ruled that presidents play no official role at any stage of the federal constitutional amendment process; and

WHEREAS, It is rather unfair for anyone to arbitrarily assume that a state legislature which ratified the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 1970s--with the understanding in those days that the 1972 ERA would expire of further state legislative consideration if not ratified by enough state legislatures by the originally agreed-to deadline of March 22, 1979--would still remain today fully supportive of the 1972 measure; and

WHEREAS, A scheme is clearly afoot to tardily penetrate the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment into the United States Constitution by improper and irregular methods, and, under the doctrine of qui tacet consentire videtur ubi loqui debuit ac potuit ("he who is silent is taken to agree, when he ought to have spoken, and was able to"), it is incumbent upon the Texas Legislature to proactively interpose clarification and objection to such an effort that--if ultimately successful--would contort the intentions of the 62nd Texas Legislature in 1972 when its members ratified the 1972 ERA; and

WHEREAS, In 2021, North Dakota legislators adopted a concurrent resolution clarifying that North Dakota's 1975 ratification of the 1972 ERA "officially lapsed at 11:59 p.m. on March 22, 1979"; and

WHEREAS, This Texas concurrent resolution cannot--and does not claim to--"rescind" the 62nd Texas Legislature's 1972 ratification of the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment as Texas was formally on record as ratifying the ERA from March 30, 1972, through March 22, 1979, and that history remains completely intact and utterly unchanged by this Texas concurrent resolution as, logically, there is nothing valid that currently remains pending before the Texas Legislature with respect to the 1972 ERA that could even be "rescinded" by the Texas Legislature in the first place; and

WHEREAS, Present-day Texas lawmakers should not silently and passively allow the 62nd Texas Legislature's 1972 ratification of the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment to be misappropriated or co-opted by well-placed forces seeking to infiltrate the long-expired 1972 ERA into the federal Constitution by aberrant means; and

WHEREAS, Current Texas legislators disagree with--and want no part of--any unorthodox, subpar, or experimental attempt to belatedly burrow the no-longer-pending 1972 ERA into the nation's highest legal document today; and

WHEREAS, Recognizing the need for women and men to be treated as equals under the law, Texas has its own state-level Equal Rights Amendment found in Article I, Section 3a, of the Texas Constitution, thereby guaranteeing equal legal rights to both women and men within this state; and

WHEREAS, During 2024, both houses of the United States Congress formally received resolutions from state lawmakers in Maryland and Minnesota memorializing the two houses of Congress to ignore the irregularity of the Illinois, Nevada, and Virginia legislatures' 2017, 2018, and 2020 post-deadline ERA "ratifications" and to proceed nevertheless to adopt a Congressional resolution proclaiming those three belated "ratifications" to be valid and ultimately to declare, albeit falsely, that the 1972 ERA has become the United States Constitution's 28th Amendment; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the 89th Legislature of the State of Texas, Regular Session, 2025, hereby assert the following facts:

(1) The national 1972 Equal Rights Amendment did not become part of the United States Constitution as the federal ERA failed to garner the constitutionally-required ratifications from a sufficient number of state legislatures by its original congressionally-imposed deadline of March 22, 1979; and

(2) The legislatures of three states--from 2017 to 2020--have purported to "ratify" the 1972 ERA, long after time ran out for them to have done so, and the legislatures of two other states have officially voiced support to Congress for that trio's tardy and irregular actions; and

(3) One of the two houses of the United States Congress has a recent history of adopting joint resolutions agreeing that the legislatures of late-acting states should have authority to "ratify" the 1972 ERA decades after the proposal's date of termination; and

(4) The now out-of-power 46th President of the United States issued a proclamation on January 17, 2025, erroneously declaring that the 1972 ERA currently "is the law of the land"; and

(5) The North Dakota Legislative Assembly demonstrated in 2021 the wisdom of formally going on record establishing legal clarification as to the status of ERA ratifications made by state legislatures from 1972 through 1977--when the Indiana General Assembly became the last state legislature to validly ratify the ERA during the 1970s; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate, therefore, do hereby join their counterparts in North Dakota by clarifying that the vitality of Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1 of the 2nd Called Session of the 62nd Texas Legislature, by which Texas lawmakers ratified the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment on March 30, 1972, officially lapsed at 11:59 p.m. on March 22, 1979; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That after March 22, 1979, the Texas Legislature--while in agreement that women and men should enjoy equal rights in the eyes of the law--should not be counted by either house of the United States Congress, should not be counted by the Archivist of the United States, should not be counted by the legislature of any other state of the Union, should not be counted by any federal or state court of law, and should not be counted by any other person or entity as still having on record today a live ratification of the long-expired Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as was offered by House Joint Resolution No. 208 of the 92nd Congress on March 22, 1972; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the 89th Texas Legislature respectfully asks that any and all formal copies of the aforementioned Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1, 62nd Texas Legislature, 2nd Called Session, which were conveyed to the federal government in 1972, be returned to the State of Texas for safekeeping and permanent preservation henceforth in the custody of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the 89th Texas Legislature courteously request that the full and complete verbatim text of this concurrent resolution be duly published in the Congressional Record as an official memorial to the United States Congress, and that this concurrent resolution be referred to whichever congressional committees, in each body, that would have appropriate jurisdiction over this concurrent resolution's subject matter; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Chief Clerk of the Texas House of Representatives be directed to forward, in separate envelopes, no later than September 30, 2025, individual certified copies of this concurrent resolution, each accompanied by its own signed cover letter, to the Vice President of the United States (in his formal capacity as presiding officer of the United States Senate and addressed to him at Suite S-212 of the United States Capitol Building), to the Secretary of the United States Senate, to the Parliamentarian of the United States Senate, and to both United States Senators representing Texas; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Chief Clerk of the Texas House of Representatives be directed to forward, in separate envelopes, no later than September 30, 2025, individual certified copies of this concurrent resolution, each accompanied by its own signed cover letter, to the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, to the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, to the Parliamentarian of the United States House of Representatives, and to all members of the United States House of Representatives elected from districts in Texas; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Chief Clerk of the Texas House of Representatives (pursuant to federal law, 98 Stat. 2280, et seq.) be directed to forward, no later than September 30, 2025, a certified copy of this concurrent resolution, accompanied by a signed cover letter, to the Archivist of the United States at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C.