Why did the Equal Rights Amendment fail?

The short answer

• A supermajority rule. The requirement of 38 ratifications gave opponents a smaller task: hold 13 states, by persuading one chamber in each. Support spread widely across the country could therefore lose to opposition concentrated in particular legislatures. The South and the Mormon West provided favorable ground for that opposition: conservative churches were strong there, and the amendment could be presented as a threat to local values.
• A counter-movement of women. Women speaking for STOP ERA presented themselves as homemakers protecting the respect and security they believed the law afforded them. Their presence made it harder to dismiss the campaign as men defending privilege. Schlafly gave followers a positive identity as wives and mothers when many felt feminism looked down on them. Like the women’s movement it opposed, the backlash could mobilize people around a shared identity.
• Abortion and the culture war. The argument over the ERA widened after Roe v. Wade in 1973. Opponents said the amendment would protect abortion and, later, gay rights, making it a question about the family as well as legal equality. Catholic, evangelical and Mormon churches joined the campaign, and by the late 1970s congregations had supplied many of STOP ERA’s most active volunteers. A victory for one movement could give another reason to organize.
• The decision lay with legislators. National polls showed majority support, but ratification depended on a few thousand state legislators, mostly men. Many served in part-time assemblies where personal lobbying mattered enormously. They heard especially from intensely committed citizens, and by the late 1970s opponents were the most intense. In Illinois, Florida and North Carolina, only a handful of legislators separated the sides in decisive votes.

What it changed

Equality by other routes. Legal change continued without the amendment. In Reed v. Reed (1971) and Craig v. Boren (1976), the Supreme Court applied stricter review to sex discrimination, asking for a strong justification for laws treating men and women differently. Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974) and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978). These courts and statutes supplied much of what the ERA had promised.

The rise of the New Right. The women organized through STOP ERA helped build a conservative coalition with churches and other grassroots activists. Its political setting changed in 1980: the Republican Party abandoned its ERA endorsement, held since 1940, and Ronald Reagan won the presidency. A “gender gap” also appeared in that election, with women voting less Republican than men; it has persisted since.

An amendment that never quite died. The ERA returned in almost every Congress after 1982. Ratifications by Nevada, Illinois and Virginia between 2017 and 2020 brought the total to 38, but the expired deadline and five rescissions left its legal status disputed. The amendment remained a symbol even as much of its practical purpose had been met through other laws.