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.